The standard edition of the laws, Felix Liebermann’s Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen (volume 1) has the original of all the laws. All abbreviations for the names of laws are taken from this edition. Modern English translations can be found in F.L. Attenborough’s 1922 The Laws of Earliest English Kings and in A.J. Robertson’s 1925 The Laws of the Kings of England from Edmund to Henry I. More recent translations can be found in S. Jurasinski & L. Oliver, The Laws of Alfred: The Domboc and the Making of Anglo-Saxon Law (2021) and A. Rabin, Old English Legal Writings: Wulfstan (2020) and The political writings of Archbishop Wulfstan of York (2016).

Our story starts, as many Anglo-Saxon stories do, with King Æthelberht of Kent at the turn of the sixth century. As far as we can tell, Æthelberht was the first king in an Anglo-Saxon kingdom to issue laws in writing. This evocative and mysterious text sets out laws on the church, on kings, noblemen and freemen. Mostly, the code is a head-to-toe list of injuries and the compensation to be paid by the perpetrator to the victim. The fact that it was written down is usually associated with the arrival of Christian missionaries sent from Rome to Kent in 597, though the laws themselves may contain remnants of pre-Christian custom, remembered and recited.

This seems to have changed by the later seventh century, when the three Kentish kings Hlothhere, Eadric and Wihtræd issued decrees of what appears to be their own judgments and decisions (rather than customs). The first of these, the laws of Hlothhere (d. 685) and Eadric (d. 686/7) – uncle and nephew – may be a joint decree or a ratification by Eadric of his predecessor’s law, and is focused on procedure, trade and legal process. Eadric’s brother Wihtræd (d.725) later issued a decree that dealt with Christian laws for the laity. This represents the totality of the Kentish contribution to the corpus: roughly 2000 words of early law.

From this point onwards, all our laws are issued by kings of Wessex and, later, kings of England. The first (as far as we know) was King Ine (r. 688–726), whose laws date to the 680s or 690s. Ine’s laws are much more extensive than those of his Kentish contemporaries (and Æthelberht) both in length (c. 2700 words) and in scope (c. 76 discrete topics covered). This text has an unusual textual transmission – it survives only as part of the law-code of King Alfred the Great, which was issued in the late ninth century. This has many implications for our interpretation of these laws, given that it’s uncertain exactly how they originally read. In general, there is reason to believe that the content of Ine’s laws represent seventh-century law, though the language of the code appears to be from the ninth century. It is possible that the code was originally composed in Latin in the seventh century based on continental models before being translated into Old English during Alfred’s reign.¹ Ine’s cosmopolitan outlook reveals itself again towards the end of his reign: after almost forty years on the throne, he abdicated and travelled to Rome as a pilgrim, where he died in 726.

This seventh-century experiment in law-writing appears to have fizzled out, because nothing survives from the almost two hundred years separating the laws of King Ine (688 x 693) and King Alfred (890s) (though it is possible that other texts have been lost, for instance laws of Offa, King of Mercia in the eighth century²).

When law-writing reappears, it looks rather different. Two texts have survived from the late ninth century and the reign of King Alfred of Wessex (r. 871–899). What was probably the first, known as the ‘Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum’ (AGu) dates to the 880s or 890s. It exists in two versions, both of which concern a peace agreement between Alfred and the viking king Guthrum, setting out a boundary between Wessex and the Danes and regulating co-existence between West Saxons and Danes. The second text, King Alfred’s great code, is typically dated to late in his reign (890s), partially because of the assumption that it would only have been written after the kingdom’s struggles against Scandinavian invaders. The four parts that make up the code (chapter list, preface, Alfred’s laws, Ine’s laws) total around 8000 words, longer than any other law until the eleventh century. Its content is also not matched by any other Anglo-Saxon law: it includes translation of biblical law, a copy of Alfred’s predecessor Ine’s code and even some historical narrative. Alfred is well-known for initiating programmes of translation (from Latin into Old English), education and ‘nation building’, and this forms the context within which we should understand his legislative efforts.

The tenth-century laws look like they are building on and adding to Alfred’s programmatic effort. His son Edward the Elder (r. 899–924) issued two short injunctions addressed to his officials, in which he makes frequent reference to a domboc (literally ‘book of judgments’, ‘law book’), most likely the code of Alfred. His successor Æthelstan (r. 924/5–39) produced a variety of different texts. II Æthelstan is the longest and most systematic of these efforts, but there are also a range of shorter and more focused laws, such as I Æthelstan, Æthelstan Alms, IV and V Æthelstan. His reign also stands out for its two surviving ‘local laws’: III Æthelstan, a decree from the bishops and reeves of Kent, and VI Æthelstan, a decree made by the bishops and ealdormen of London and confirmed with a pledge by ‘our peace guild’. Both respond and add to some of Æthelstan’s royal decrees, and VI Æthelstan also sets out set out the peace guild’s communal measures for protection against theft.

Æthelstan’s brother King Edmund (r. 939–946) issued two pieces of legislation. The seemingly earliest of these, I-II Edmund, is the first in a line of double decrees: those which have one ecclesiastical and one secular part. III Edmund is similar to some of Æthelstan’s laws (IV and V) in scope and content. It sets out to achieve general peace through measures like a loyalty oath, ensuring that people have witnesses to trade, that there are systems for tracking stolen cattle, that everyone has sureties and so on.

The tenth century probably also saw the issue of a group of anonymous laws, including those known as Dunsæte, the Hundred Ordinance, Ordeal and Wer. These texts don’t mention any king’s name and so their date and context are mostly unknown. Of these two texts stand out. One is a compilation on theft made up of clauses taken from various royal laws (known as Alfred-Guthrumu Appendix) and the other is a tract (II Æthelred Appendix), also on the topic of theft, which stands out for its pithy maxims. (I’ll write more about these later.)

No laws survive in the names of Eadred (r. 946–55) and Eadwig (r. 955–9), but their descendant King Edgar (r. 959–75) became an important law-maker. What appears to be his first surviving law, the double-code known as II-III Edgar, is the most programmatic looking statement since Alfred’s code. It follows Edmund’s bipartite structure: II Edgar is an ecclesiastical decree which sets out rules on church dues, feasts and fasts; III Edgar deals with worldly issues like false accusations, courts, sureties and coinage. In the Anglo-Saxon context, it stands out for its unusually long and logically structured chapters. It would come to have a long afterlife, since it was worked into the laws of King Cnut, which kept getting copied, translated and reworked into the thirteenth century. But Edgar also issued legislation in the style of his predecessors: the more informal decree IV Edgar records a speech on tithes, followed by a list of rules on trade, witnessing and similar topics (for a translation and commentary, see here and here.

Edgar’s son King Æthered (the Unready) (r. 978–1013, 1014–16) has more law-texts to his name than any other Anglo-Saxon king. We usually make a distinction between the early codes (I, II, III and IV Æthelred) and the later ones (V, VI (OE and Latin), VII and VIII Æthelred). Two fragments, known as IX and X Æthelred, are more difficult to place, but probably belong to the later period. The composite text known as IV Æthelred – which concerns currency, weights, trade, tolls and general peace with a focus on London – may not date to Æthelred’s reign at all; and in any case, parts must have been composed by a local London body, rather than by royal initiative.³ The three other laws of Æthelred should be seen in the context of the problems arising with the Scandinavian attacks on England between 991 and 1005. One of these, II Æthelred, is a peace agreement between Æthelred and the Scandinavian leader Olaf. It sets out the terms of the English settlement with the vikings, including payments, as well as regulations for co-existence between the two groups. Two other codes seem to have been issued during the troublesome 990s. III Æthelred concerns seemingly Anglo-Scandinavian customs, though its jurisdiction is unclear.⁴ I Æthelred explicitly (and unusually) states that it is æfter Engla lage, ‘according to the laws of the English’. Both codes seem like attempts to record legal practices in various parts of the country, perhaps as part of administrative reforms initiated in connection with foreign attacks.

The later parts of Æthelred’s reign were no less problematic, with renewed viking attacks taking place between 1006 and 1012. The laws dating from this period were composed by Archbishop Wulfstan of York, whose idiosyncratic style has made it possible to assign him as author to many texts. His surviving laws for Æthelred are mostly ecclesiastical. For instance, V and VI Æthelred (which exists in both Old English and Latin) may be associated with the same ecclesiastical assembly at Enham in 1008. Like much of Wulfstan’s output (legislative and otherwise), these laws set out to reform society in ways that could bring peace and order. This kind of approach is most obvious in the decree VII Æthelred.⁵ Issued in 1009, it sets out the king’s response to an attack by Thorkell and his army. Æthelred’s attempt to restore peace through divine favour involved fasting, prayer, alms-giving and penance performed by the whole population for three days. It’s possible that VIII Æthelred was also issued as a form of penance, but this time on behalf of the king personally, who returned to throne in 1014, after having left England for Normandy in some disrepute when Danish King Sweyn Forkbeard (d. 1014) invaded in 1013.

After Æthelred’s tumultuous reign, we get the first code issued by a Danish king, namely King Cnut (r. 1016–35), Sweyn’s son, who became king of England (as well as Denmark and Norway) in 1016. Even though Cnut had fought against Æthelred and defeated his son Edmund Ironside in 1016, he very much upheld the legislative tradition of his English predecessors. The laws surviving in Cnut’s name are composed in Old English, mostly by Wulfstan, and they recycle much of what the archbishop had already written for Æthelred. This is the case for the earliest law, known as Cnut 1018, issued at a meeting in Oxford in 1018, which presents itself as part of the settlement between the English and Cnut. The surviving text of this law was mostly subsumed into Wulfstan’s main project for Cnut, the law-code known as I-II Cnut. It’s more ambitious than anything he wrote for Æthelred: its 7200 words offer the most comprehensive treatment of ecclesiastical law (in I Cnut) and worldly law (in II Cnut) in the whole legal corpus. The code also stands out for its literary qualities and jurisprudential character. Cnut’s name is also attached to two legislative letters, dating to 1019–20 and 1027. These are addressed to the people, bishops, earls and reeves of England, sent while Cnut was abroad, and contain part narrative and part regulations on ecclesiastical matters, justice and loyalty.

No further worldly laws survive from England until William the Conqueror’s reign. The Anglo-Saxon laws were, however, copied, translated and reworked in the next two centuries. In fact, most surviving manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon law were made after the Norman conquest in 1066, the most significant being Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 383 and Textus Roffensis. There are also several manuscripts preserving Latin translations of many of the royal laws (including some that have not survived in Old English), known as the Quadripartitus collection. I-II Cnut was translated as part of this project, but it was also reworked and augmented in several different Latin version, known as Consiliatio Cnuti and Instituti Cnuti.⁶ Later in the twelfth century, it appears that translating and reworking the laws of Cnut and other Anglo-Saxon kings fell out of favour, though the link to the pre-conquest kingdom’s laws was preserved. Some new legal tracts claimed to represent the laga Edwardi – a reference to Edward the Confessor (who, as far as we know, never issued any laws) – as confirmed by King William I. However, tract known as Leges Edwardi Confessoris does not use the text of any Anglo-Saxon laws and so this marks an end to the production and reproduction of Anglo-Saxon legislation.

If we leave the post-conquest versions aside, this gives us a corpus of around thirty-five surviving pieces of Anglo-Saxon legislation in the names of a dozen kings who ruled between the seventh and the eleventh centuries. Although we often talk about this as one corpus and one tradition, it isn’t quite. The seventh-century laws seem to have been a more isolated phenomenon, a kind of flash-in-the-pan from some kings of Kent and Wessex.⁷ The bulk of the laws are from the late ninth century onwards, all by kings who could style themselves as kings of Wessex or later “England”. This means that there is a law-writing period of about 80 years in the seventh century and one of about 130 years from the late ninth century to 1020.

But nevertheless, there are many similarities between the texts in this corpus. These include that they: 1. are mostly decrees on a few topics rather than comprehensive codes; 2. concern similar topics (including theft, trade, religious offences, violence, judicial procedures); 3. share certain stylistic features in their prose and layout; 4. rarely give general rules or principles, but instead have conditional clauses setting out situations and their outcomes. Often the rules and laws are partial – we might only hear about one particular circumstance and not the basic rule (‘alluding to the law…but not defining it’ in the words of the historian Francis Palgrave).

But it is also a difficult textual tradition with lots of variety. Some laws have survived in multiple manuscripts, others in a single copy. Most texts are in Old English, but a few survive only in twelfth-century Latin and some in pre-conquest Latin. Some are composite, sometimes slapdash, texts, while others appear to be carefully planned compositions. Some have only a few lines, others have hundreds. Some refer to their sources, makers and contexts, others give the impression that they were written in a vacuum. Some seem to have been intended for a time-limited period, others for the long term. And we do not just get laws from kings but also anonymous laws, compilations, different versions, extracts, etr… It’s not always easy to say what is an Anglo-Saxon law-text.