And this
appears to be the best supported and most plausible conjecture,
(for certainty is not to be expected,) of the rise and original
of that admirable system of maxims and unwritten customs which
is now known by the name of the common law, as extending its
authority universally over all the realm, and which is doubtless
of Saxon parentage." 4 Blackstone, 412.
"By the Lex Terrae and Lex Regni is understood the laws of
Edward the Confessor, confirmed and enlarged as they were by William
the Conqueror; and this Constitution or Code of Laws is what even to
this day are called 'The Common Law of the Land.'" Introduction
to Gilbert's History of the Common Pleas, p. 22, note.
[8] Not the conqueror of the English people, (as the friends of
liberty maintain,) but only of Harold the usurper. See Hale's
History of the Common, Law, ch. 5.
[9] For all these codes see Wilkins' Laws of the Anglo-Saxons.
"Being regulations adapted to existing institutions, the
Anglo-Saxon statutes are concise and technical, alluding to the
law which was then living and in vigor, rather than defining it.
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