In 1893, the same year that he published his slim edition of the Consiliatio Cnuti, Felix Liebermann turned his attention, in a paper published by the Royal Historical Society, to another overlooked Latin translation of Old English law. The object of his interest was one of the three Latin translations of Old English legal texts made after 1066. It went under many titles – Liebermann proposed replacing these with his own, drawn in part from two of the earliest witnesses, but crafted to reflect better, he thought, the actual contents of the translation: the Instituta Cnuti aliorumque regum Anglorum. And so it has been known ever since. At first glance it is not for its time a remarkable text. Like three of its contemporaries, it chose the codes of Cnut as its principal source. And like two of its contemporaries, it included laws issued under other kings’ names. It is not the longest or most comprehensive collection of English law: Quadripartitus is. Nor is it the most idiosyncratic: the Consiliatio Cnuti charts a course very separate from its fellow translations. It was, however, the most popular in the twelfth century. Half of the Instituta’s witnesses – seven manuscripts – come from the twelfth century or the turn of the thirteenth century. Quadripartitus has five that are that old; the Consiliatio Cnuti (in fragmentary form) has two; the Leges Henrici Primi, none.

The Instituta consists of translations of selected chapters from Cnut’s code (conventionally known as I and II Cnut) mingled with selections translated from Edgar’s second code and Alfred. After that come more selections from Ine, Alfred, and a collection of treatises on status by Bishop Wulfstan of Worcester (1002–16; archbishop of York, 1002–23) called the ‘Geþyncðu Group’: Geþyncðu, Norðleoda laga, Mircna Laga, Að, and Hadbot, and another of Wulfstan’s treatises, Grið, as well as one or several unidentified sources. It appears to have been divided into two or three books in its earliest manuscript copy (MS H: Textus Roffensis); I and II Cnut are run together with only a larger initial to signal the change, while a break is present after II Cnut and before the sections from Alfred-Ine. The whole fills thirty-five pages double-spaced in US paper size or thirty-three in A4.