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o one in tudor england knew more about Anglo-Saxon law than William Lambarde.He edited the Archaionomia,1 a facing-page edition of old english laws and Latin translations, and authored several other influential legal handbooks and histories; the first history of an english county, the Perambulation of Kent, also came from his pen. A quick survey of the Perambulation shows that even when he was not writing a legal text, Lambarde regarded Anglo-Saxon law differently than he did other aspects of medieval history.The Perambulation must continually negotiate the need to use medieval (and hence Catholic) sources in order to learn about the past, and the need to reject them as flawed and inferior to “modern”(i.e., Protestant) thinking. Lambarde claims that only recently have “the late learned and yet best travailed in the histories of our countrey”spurned “the fonde dreames of doting monks and fabling friars.”2 Rejecting or demeaning monastic sources leaves a historian with little to work with, and Lambarde realizes this,but his Protestant agenda does not allow him much choice. However, when he draws on legal texts, his attitude alters from the apologetic and occasionally scornful tone he takes toward his other sources. near the end of the Perambulation, Lambarde transcribes and translates an “english (or Saxon) antiquitie,which I have seene placed in divers old copies of the Saxon lawes.”3 This tract,which Felix Liebermann titled Geþyncþu (Ranks) in volume one of his Gesetze and which Lambarde copied from the Textus Roffensis, contains what Patrick Wormald observes are “among the best-known lines in Anglo-Saxon law” explaining how ceorls, merchants, or scholars can gain the status of thegns, and how thegns can become eorls.4 Lambarde uses “english ”and “Saxon”synonymously when he introduces the tract, giving the text more immediacy—it is an “english”document. Lambarde interprets the text as showing that “[vertue] ought by all reason to be rewarded with due enseignes of honour, to the end that vertue may be the more desirously embraced.”5 The Anglo-Saxon law “That auntient authoritie”: Old English Laws in the Writings ofWilliam Lambarde Rebecca J. Brackmann N 111 codes, described as “english,” provide immediately applicable and unambiguously positive examples for Lambarde’s readers, whereas other aspects of medieval history , embedded in and transmitted by monastic and clerical culture, must be carefully negotiated to separate “proper vanities”from “sincere veritie.”6 This essay will explore why Lambarde thought differently about old english law than he did about other areas of medieval culture by examining how his Anglo-Saxon research and his belief in english law’s antiquity both shaped and were shaped by his conception of common law in his own day. tudor antiquaries studied the Anglo-Saxon period with interests and emphases different from those of modern scholars; for instance,Theodore Leinbaugh and R. I. Page, among others , have documented the polemical uses to which Archbishop Matthew Parker put old english homilies in the 1566 A Testimonie of Antiquitie.7 Less work has been done on why the law codes of the Anglo-Saxons were of the first importance to Lambarde. The english legal system, however, mattered no less in early modern england than the elizabethan religious settlement. J. G. A. Pocock contends, “[s]ince the common law unified so much in english social behaviour, it unified englishmen’s thoughts about the past, and gave them a set of beliefs about their national history more satisfying,because more relevant to their present social structure ...even than the myths of the original independence of the Anglican church.”8 Perhaps Pocock errs in attempting to claim pride of place for law over religion in english historical thought; both were crucial and, as I shall show, Lambarde felt they were mutually reinforcing. However, Pocock’s statement underscores the tudor exploration of english legal history, and Lambarde provides an excellent case study for how this research coincided with the dawn of Anglo-Saxon studies. Lambarde believed law was crucial to english identity because it not only enforced perceived differences between english and foreign but itself stood as one of those differences, in its non-Roman origin and its long-standing force. The common law’s development from Anglo-Saxon law meant that both law and Protestantism could be traced back to england’s past, and could support each other as focal points for english identity.9 In fact, in Lambarde’s view, Anglo-Saxon laws were so fundamental that...

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