SECTION I
ANGLO-SAXON INSTITUTIONS. 449-1066.
I. The Anglo-Saxon Conquest and its Problems.—
The Anglo-Saxon period is filled with problems. Halt-
land states an important truth about all early institutions
in what he says of early law:
The grown man will find it easier to think the thoughts of
the schoolboy than to think the thoughts of the baby. And
yet the doctrine that our remote forefathers being simple folk
had simple law, dies hard. Too often we allow ourselves to
suppose that, could we but get back to the beginning, we
should find that all was intelligible and should then be able
to watch the process whereby simple ideas were smothered
under subtleties and technicalities. But it is not so. Sim-
plicity is the outcome of technical subtlety; it is the goal not
the starting point. As we go backwards the familiar outlines
become blurred, the ideas become fluid, and instead of the
simple we find the indefinite.1
Some reasons for the difficulty which all scholars find in
understanding Anglo-Saxon, especially early Anglo-Saxon,
institutions may be stated. There was an actual com-
plexity of custom, pettiness of detail, and endless local
variation. The people of those times neither thought
clearly nor spoke with precision about their own institu-
tions; they were incapable of broad generalisation or
exact definition, and never thought of the possibility of
saving labour and doubt by striving for greater uniformity
* Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 9.
3