Studies on Anglo-Saxon Institutions - H. Munro Chadwick

(Cambridge Literary Collection, Cambridge University Press), 2010

422pp., £21.99 paper, ISBN 978-1-108-01005-4

Why bother to review a book that was originally published in 1905 and some of whose conclusions have been questioned by later historians?  The answer is simple: it's a very well-written, accessible and detailed analysis of the development of early English law and administration.  It remains as fresh a study of the Anglo-Saxon period as when it was first written.  The first chapters of the book explore the development of monetary and social systems relating it to the Frankish monetary system. 

The remainder of the book looks at Anglo-Saxon administration at local and national levels, the nature of land tenure and the ways in which a nobility emerged.  Chadwick showed, and he was one of the first historians to do so, that what characterised the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms was their diversity of their responses to the same sorts of problems and that their legal and social evolution showed marked differences.   Chadwick's approach a century ago combined history, archaeology and philology in novel ways to highlight areas that other historians subsequently developed.  I remember reading Anglo-Saxon Institutions first when I was a sixth form student and finding it a work of real insight.  Re-reading it forty years later has not changed that view.  Despite its age, it remains an important study for medievalists.