This study has, quite deliberately, approached the leges in the Carolingian period from a variety of angles, using different kinds of source. In some senses, and in some cases, the texts remain as awkward at the end of this study as at the beginning. It may never be possible convincingly to pin down a context for the production and preservation of the minor leges, to understand the use of the Lex Ribuaria, or why the tradition of the additional capitularies can be so curious. The extrapolation of so much from so few and difficult sources, an unusually elaborate charter here, an interpolated text there, a few possible parallels between manuscript readings, means that a great deal of this work may not convince. Its implications may also not always be clear at this stage of work. Still, setting out the evidence is itself worthwhile, and some patterns do emerge, which might be refined by future work.

In Chapters 1 and 2 I considered the relationship between ethnic identity and lex and found it to be very variable. The Lex Ribuaria barely corresponded with a Ribuarian gens, except in very specific circumstances. In the Ewa ad Amorem, gens is essentially invisible. The text may have been produced in the context of a reorganisation of landholding in an area of relatively recent Frankish control, in which understanding social status in detail was held to be important. The Lex Saxonum may have described the Saxon past, but that past was, apparently, used less for projecting Saxon identity (inwards or outwards) than for arguing about social status within Saxon society, in complex and varied ways.

In these chapters I began to question the role of Frankish kings in the production of written law, which brought into question Wormald's views on the link between legislation and royal-imperial ideology. In Saxony, despite vigorous interest in lex, no sources involve Charlemagne in any way with Saxon lex until the 880s. I suggested that our sources for Charlemagne's activity in 802 be reinterpreted, that it may not be appropriate to talk of a ‘reform’ of the leges in the years following his imperial coronation.