King

Cnut Cnut ( ; ; – 12 November 1035), also known as Canute and with the epithet the Great, was King of England from 1016, King of Denmark from 1018, and King of Norway from 1028 until his death in 1035. The three kingdoms united under Cnut's rul ...

of England issued two complementary law-codes during his reign, though they are believed to have been edited or even composed by Wulfstan, Archbishop of York. They were composed in

Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...

and are divided into two parts, I Cnut (on ecclesiastical matters) and II Cnut (on secular matters). As well as surviving in a later Latin translation as the ''

Instituta Cnuti The ''Instituta Cnuti'', in full ''Instituta Cnuti aliorumque regum Anglorum'' (''Institutes of Cnut and other kings of the English''), is a legal compilation that cites, in Latin translation, selected material of Old English law. It was put togeth ...

'', the laws of Cnut survive in four manuscripts: * London, British Library, Cotton Nero A. i, fols. 3–41 (mid-eleventh century) * Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 201, fols. 126–30 (mid-eleventh century) * Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 383, pp. 43–72 (twelfth-century) * London, British Library Harley 55, fols. 5–13 (twelfth-century).Mary P. Richards, 'I-II Cnut: Wulfstan's ''Summa''?', in ''English Law Before Magna Carta: Felix Liebermann and 'Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen’'', ed. by Stefan Jurasinski, Lisi Oliver and Andrew Rabin, Medieval Law and Its Practice, 8 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 137-56. .

References

Anglo-Saxon law Texts of Anglo-Saxon England {{England-law-stub

See also

References