New Atlantis (utopian novel)

The Preface.

How many pious lawgivers original Greek: Nomothetes has this little island provided? Such as King Ine, Offa, Ethelwulf, Alfred the Great (also called Alured), Edward the Elder, Athelstan, Edwy, Edgar, Ethelred, Canute, and Edward the Confessor—most of whom the legal scholar Bracton Henry de Bracton (c. 1210–1268), an influential English jurist and judge mentions as our lawmakers. And undoubtedly, while the authority of their various edicts flourished, much morality and civility lived in this kingdom.

To the Saxon and Danish laws (from the people by whom England was first conquered), the last Conqueror William the Conqueror added some of his Norman laws. Out of all of these, that which we still call the common law was compiled, as it was a collective extract of them all.

This Norman [William], I say, governed this stubborn original: "sullen" nation like the conqueror he was—ruling with a rod of iron; keeping some of the old laws, but imposing many more new ones. And though the people struggled under the weight of his new and heavy taxes original: "impositions" and petitioned him to restore the laws of Edward the Confessor—by which they might be freed from extraordinary taxes—neither he nor his son Rufus William II, known as William Rufus who succeeded him granted them that relief original: "immunity".

It is true that Henry I (who summoned the first Parliament) and King Stephen (who both wrongfully seized the...