What was the Tennis Court Oath?5.

The Germanic tribes (Angles, Saxons, Jutes) after Rome's withdrawal: seven kingdoms (the heptarchy), a king advised by the Witan (council of nobles and churchmen — consent's germ); local government by shires (the shire-moot, the shire-reeve/sheriff) and hundreds; law as folkright — tribal custom (compurgation — oath-helpers; wergild — the money-price of injury paid to avoid feud; ordeal as God's judgment); the beginnings of unity under Alfred the Great (laws collected, dooms issued, burhs fortified); trial by jury's remote ancestors (Alfred's hanging of unfair judges — legend; the Norman inquest is closer kin). The law-student's point: Anglo- Saxon England = law as custom of the folk, administered in community courts — the common law's subsoil.