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A student edition
"To a Lawyer, even a Practicer at the Bar, this Language cannot be but of great Use; since the very Elements and Foundations of our Laws are laid in this Tongue."
- Sir John Fortescue Aland
"To tell the Government of England under the old Saxon laws, seemeth an Utopia to us present; strange and uncouth: yet can there be no period assigne!, wherein either the frame of those laws was abolished, or this of ours entertained; but as Day and Night creep insensibly, one upon the other, so hath this Alteration grown upon us insensibly, every age altering something."
- Sir Henry Spelman
"[The Old English language will] reward amply the few weeks of attention which would alone be requisite for its attainment; a language already fraught with all the eminent science of our parent country, the future vehicle of whatever we may ourselves achieve, and destined to occupy so much space on the globe, claims distinguished attention in American education."
- Thomas Jefferson
Introduction
The laws of Æthelberht, king of Kent, were probably recorded between 597 and 604. They represent the oldest text we have in Old English, the oldest extant vernacular laws in a Germanic language, and the earliest legal collocation from the Anglo-Saxon territories, or, in fact, from anywhere in the British Isles. Legal historians have studied these laws to determine to what extent they prefigure legal precepts that form the basis of our current system. In addition to giving us our first look at English laws, however, this collection of statutes provides a wealth of information about topics such as social practices, the status of women, medical knowledge and the stratification of rank in early Anglo-Saxon England. The task of the translator is to extract that information from these often terse statements.
Historical background
The story of the recording of Æthelberht's laws is inextricably bound up with the mission to convert Anglo-Saxon England. It begins with an almost certainly apocryphal anecdote related in Bedes Ecclesiastical History ILi, which immortalizes three of the worst puns in history The future Pope Gregory the Great, in the days before his papal election, was wandering one day in the market place of Rome:
As well as other merchandise he saw...