31].
[****** LL.Ethelst.sect, 20.] As the extreme ignorance of the age made deeds and writings very rare, the county or hundred court was the place where the most remarkable civil transactions were finished, in order to preserve the memory of them, and prevent all future disputes.

Here testaments were promulgated, slaves manumitted, bargains of sale concluded, and sometimes, for greater security, the most considerable of these deeds were inserted in the blank leaves of the parish Bible, which thus became a kind of register, too sacred to be falsified.

It was not unusual to add to the deed an imprecation on all such as should be guilty of that crime.[*] [* Hickes, Dissert, epist.] Among a people who lived in so simple a manner as the Anglo-Saxons, the judicial power is always of greater importance than the legislative.
There were few or no taxes imposed by the states; there were few statutes enacted; and the nation was less governed by laws, than by customs, which admitted a great latitude of interpretation.

Though it should, therefore, be allowed, that the wittenagemot was altogether composed of the principal nobility, the county courts, where all the freeholders were admitted, and which regulated all the daily occurrences of life, formed a wide basis for the government, and were no contemptible checks on the aristocracy.

But there is another power still more important than either the judicial or legislative; to wit, the power of injuring or serving by immediate force and violence, for which it is difficult to obtain redress in courts of justice.