54 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



between religion and law, and between those who administered 

 them. Nevertheless, the evidence everywhere points to the con- 

 clusion we have already reached. 



Beginning with heathen times there may be put first the facts 

 which Sir George Dasent gives us respecting the ancient Norse. 

 He writes : 



The priest " was the only civil, just as he was the only religious author- 

 ity minister and magistrate in one." 



" In trials ... it fell on him [the priest! to name the judges, and to 

 superintend the proceedings." 



But it seems that even in those rude days there had come into ex- 

 istence non-clerical advocates. 



*' There were the lawmen or lawyers (logmenn), a class which we shall 

 find still flourishing in the time of which oui' Saga tells. They were pri- 

 vate persons, invested with no official character." " They seem to have 

 been simply law-skilled men, ' counsel ' to whom men in need of advice 

 betook themselves." 



In harmony with these statements are those made by an au- 

 thority respecting Old-English institutions, Mr. Gomme. He 

 says 



'' We learn from the historians of Saxony that the ' Frey Feldgericht ' of 

 Corhey was, in pagan times, under the supremacy of the priests of the 

 Eresburgh." 



" There can be little doubt that the church or tem]3le of primitive so- 

 ciety was the self-same spot as the assembly-place of the people and the 

 court of justice." 



In support of this last conclusion it may be remarked that as in 

 early times gatherings for worship afforded occasions for trad- 

 ing, so they also afforded occasions for legal settlements of dis- 

 putes ; and further that the use of the sacred edifice for this pur- 

 pose (as among the Babylonians) was congruous with the concep- 

 tion, everywhere anciently entertained, that legal proceedings 

 tacitly or avowedly invoked divine interposition tacitly in the 

 taking of an oath and avowedly in trial by judicial combat. 



The conquest of northern heathenism by Christianity gradu- 

 ally led to subjugation of the heathen system of law by the sys- 

 tem of law the Church imposed partly its own, the canon law, 

 and partly that inherited from Roman civilization, the civil 

 law. The rules of conduct which, transmitted from the heathen 

 priesthood, had become the common law, were in large meas- 

 ure overridden by the rules of conduct which the Christian 

 priesthood either enacted or adopted. In early English days 

 lay and clerical magnates co-operated in the local courts: laws 

 derived from the old religion and from the new religion were 

 jointly enforced. 



" The clergy, in particular, as they then engrossed almost every other 

 branch of learning, so (like their predecessors, the Bi'itish Druids), they 



