The question is both fascinating and challenging, because “law” in its earliest English forms did not exist as a neat, codified set of rules, but rather as a living body of customs, judgments, and royal proclamations. To find the oldest identifiable laws in England, historians look primarily to the surviving codes of Anglo-Saxon kings. Among these, the earliest that we can directly read today are the laws of King Æthelberht of Kent, dating to the early 7th century—over 1,400 years ago.
This article explores the historical context of these ancient laws, what they actually contained, and how they set the groundwork for the common law tradition that would eventually spread around the globe.
The dawn of English law: tribal customs to royal codes
Before England was “England,” it was a patchwork of tribal kingdoms populated by Germanic settlers—the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes—who arrived in the 5th century following the withdrawal of Roman legions from Britain. These societies were governed by unwritten customs, deeply rooted in kinship obligations, vengeance, and compensation.
Disputes were settled in local assemblies called moots, where freemen gathered to hear cases, give judgments, and enforce customary penalties. There was no police force or standing army to enforce these decisions; instead, the threat of feud or blood vengeance encouraged compliance. If you wronged someone, your kin might be dragged into a spiral of retaliatory violence.
However, even these tribal societies had mechanisms to curb endless cycles of revenge. The idea of wergild—a man’s monetary value—emerged to allow compensation to be paid for injury or death, averting further bloodshed. This was already an early form of restorative justice. But it would take royal initiative to start writing these customs down as formal “laws.” shutdown123