THE OWNERSHIP OF THE DEAD. 329 



not only lived as early as the second century of the Christian era, but 

 actually assisted (as Selden states in his "Appendix to Fleta ") in the 

 judicial administration of Britain, He was the contemporary, and 

 doubtless the personal and professional friend, of the celebrated prae- 

 torian-prefect Papinian, himself the most distinguished lawyer of his 

 age, and chief administrator, in the year 210, of the Roman govern- 

 ment at York, Selden glowingly depicts the judicial illumination of 

 that early British age, as flourishing alike under the " Jus Ca?sareura," 

 the imperial law, and its able administration by those two most ac- 

 complished and illustrious Romans, " viri peritissimi, illustrissimique 

 e Romanis. (Selden's "Appendix to Fleta," p, 478,) 



Nor is there any reason to believe that the Romanized British, 

 when released, in the fifth century, from their political allegiance 

 to the empire, abandoned the civilization, or abrogated the laws or 

 usages which they had so long enjoyed; still less that they would 

 seek or desire, in any way, to withdraw from their sepulchres and 

 graves the protection which those laws bad so fully secured. There 

 is not a shadow of historical evidence that, under the Saxon invaders, 

 who succeeded the Roman governors, any less respect was shown for 

 the buried dead. On the contrary, it is distinctly shown by the Scan- 

 dinavian historians, that these partially civilized Saxons had been 

 specially taught to reverence their places of burial by their great 

 leader Odin, the father of Scandinavian letters, distinguished for his 

 eloquence and persuasive power, and especially commemorated as 

 being the first to introduce the custom of erecting gravestones in 

 honor of the dead. 



In the dim and flickering light by which we trace the laws of these 

 long-buried ages, the fact is significant and instructive that, of the 

 several founders of the seven little Saxon kingdoms constituting the 

 Heptarchy, nearly all deduced their descent, more or less remotely, 

 from Odin himself. Hengist, who led the Saxon forces into Britain, 

 and became first King of Kent, claimed with peculiar pride to be his 

 great-grandson rendering it quite improbable that during the rule 

 of himself or his race, or that of his kindred sovereigns, which lasted 

 from three to four hundred years, Saxonized Britain learned to aban- 

 don its buried ancestors, or hold them, in law, " nullius in bonis," 



Nor do we find, in the occasional inroads of the Danes temporarily 

 disturbing the Saxon governments of England, any evidence that they 

 obliterated, in the slightest degree, the reverential usages in the mat- 

 ter of the dead, coming down from Odin, The early laws of that rude 

 people, carefully collected in the twelfth century by the learned anti- 

 quary Saxo Grammaticus, speak with abhorrence of those who insult 

 the ashes of the dead, not only denouncing death upon the " alieni 

 corruptor cineris," but condemning the body of the ofiender to lie for- 

 ever unburied and unhouored. (" Law of Frotho," Saxo Grammati- 

 cus, lib. V.) 



