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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1890 edition. Excerpt:...one large battle and then an end, but was the result of a series of incursions, a gradual conquest extending over a period of generations. The separate tribes of Angles, Jutes and Saxons came at different times and mingled so gradually as to lose even national identity. They came without any law save a jumble of tribal customs. Many of these, it is true, were transplanted and fixed their ultimate influence on English institutions, but, in the main, they saw the advantages of the elaborate system prevailing amongst the conquered Britons and gradually adopted so much thereof as suited and as their minds could grasp the wisdom of. From a nomadic they soon changed to a sedentary life and saw that their old customs were inapplicable to their then condition. Though it is doubtless true that the written laws of the Saxons which are now in existence contain very litJe trace of Roman influences, yet that fact is easily explainable. Says Mr. Finlason, by degrees they became sensible of their barbarism; they learnt a better law, and there grew np among them an unwritten law derived from the traditions of the Roman law, which remained when their own rude written laws had become obsolete. It would be a great error, says the same writer, to suppose that the Saxon laws contained all the law the Saxons had. They derived a whole system of laws and institutions from the Romans; their written laws were only additions thereto, and for the most part rude and barbarous. Pages might be written instancing principles in force among the Saxons of England, but which were directly antagonistic to their original ideas and customs and that were clearly of Roman origin, but such an enumeration is beyond the bounds of this article....