III. — On the Develop7nent of the King's Peace and 

 the English Local Peace- Magistracy. 



By GEORGE E. HOWARD. 

 I. EVOLUTION OF THE PUBLIC PEACE. 



The primary duty of government is the preservation of 

 peace. There can be no society, no community, however 

 loose the bond or however narrow the sphere, without some 

 means for maintaining order. The genesis of government is 

 the beginning of peace. The most cursory glance at the 

 first Teutonic codes, and especially those of early England, 

 reveals a restless anxiety to escape the violence and license 

 of the times. Theft, assault, robbery appear on almost every 

 page ; and perjury has been well called the " dominant crime 

 of the Middle Ages."^ The Ripuarian and Salian codes are 

 practically catalogues of crimes and penalties.^ The old 

 English laws, from those of ^Ethelberht and Ine to those of 

 ^thelred and Canute, consist almost wholly of police regu- 

 lations. Our ancestors possessed small talent for legislation. 

 Even Alfred the Great or the imperial Canute could do little 

 more than make selection from the confused mass of customs 

 relating to the peace — a confusion caused by the absorption 

 of diverse tribes into the kingdom — and prescribe new or 



1 Hallam, Middle Ages ; Forsyth, Trial by Jury, 69. On the prevalence of 

 perjury in the early middle ages, of. the interesting remarks of Bernard!, De 

 L'Origine et des Progres de la Legislation Fran^aise, 87-S; and those of Miche- 

 let, Origines du droit Fran^ais, pp. li.-lii. 



2 See Guizot, History of Civilization, II, 184 ff., for an analysis of these codes. 

 For a critical examination of the Lex Salica, Das alte Recht of Waitz should be 

 consulted. Behrend, Lex Salica, has provided an admirable edition of the text, 

 together with a glossary. On the Lex Ribuaria, see Sohm in Zeiischrift fiir 

 Rechtsgeschichte, Band 5, Heft 3. 



