The Ancient Constitution and the Udal Law

Abstract

This paper considers English debates about ancient constitutionalism alongside another Pocockian paradigm, the call for an archipelagic history of the British Isles. In thinking about early modern English politics and historiography, scholars have overlooked ideas concerning the impact of Danish and Norwegian settlers. Yet the Danes sometimes took prominent roles in antiquarian thought: as allies or fellow Gothic kinsmen of the English; as aliens, sometimes represented as alike to the Normans; and as one of many nations contributing to England's multi-ethnic make-up. Some historians denied that England had been subject to Scandinavian conquest, whilst others painted its existence as a significant ‘Danish yoke'. Certain antiquarians, meanwhile, thought they had ‘discovered' Danish vestiges in England's popular culture and physical remains. Caution, it will be argued, is necessary regarding these findings. Stronger evidence of a Scandinavian legacy in constitutional and cultural matters can be found in Britain's outer islands of Orkney, Shetland, and Isle of Man. These presented real boundaries for thinking about the Scottish and English realms. As a result, while early modern antiquaries attempted to incorporate the Danes into domestic histories with ultimately minimal disruption, they encountered the limits of the constitution in Britain’s Scandinavian fringe.