Alfred took over as the foundation of his work for Wessex the code compiled for the West Saxons by his ancestor, King Ine; for Mercia, that compiled by Offa, King of Mercia; for the Jutes, that compiled by Ethelbert, King of Kent. In his work, two main principles guided the law-giver: first, that justice should be provided for every one, high and low, rich and poor; next, that the Christian religion should be recognized as containing the Law of God, which must be the basis of all laws. Both these principles were especially necessary to be observed at this time. The devastation of the long wars had caused justice to be neglected; and the destruction of the churches, and the murder or flight of the clergy, had caused the people to relapse into their old superstitions.

King Alfred then boldly began his code by reciting the Laws of God. His opening words were: "Thus saith the Lord, I am the Lord thy God." That is his keynote. The laws of a people must conform with the Laws of God. If they are contrary to the spirit of these Laws they cannot be righteous laws. In order that every one might himself compare his laws with the Laws of God, he prefaced his laws first by the Ten Commandments; after this he quoted at length certain chapters of the Mosaic Law. These chapters he followed by the short epistle in the Acts of the Apostles concerning what should be expected. and demanded of Christians. Finally, Alfred adds the precept from St. Matthew, "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them."

Some writers have assumed that Alfred required of his subjects by this preamble that they

should be governed in all the details of life by the Mosaic Law. This view I cannot accept. Alfred set forth, I think, these laws in order that his own might be compared with them where comparison was possible, and in order to challenge comparison and to give the greater weight to his own laws by showing that they were based in spirit and mutatis mutandis, on the Levitical Law and on the Law of the Gospel.

Moreover, in order to connect the whole system of justice with religion, in order to teach the people in the most efficacious manner possible that the Church desires justice above all things, he added to the sentence of the judge the penance of the Church. This subjection of the law to the Church would seem intolerable to us. At that time it was necessary to make a rude, ignorant, and violent people understand that religion must be more than a creed: that it must have a practical and restraining side; a man who was made to understand that an offence against the law was an offence against the Church, which would be punished by the latter as well as by the secular judge, was made for the first time to feel the reality of the Church.

This firm determination to link the Divine Law and the human law; this firm reliance on the Divine Law as the foundation of all law, is to me the most characteristic point in the whole of Alfred's work. The view, the intention, the purpose of King Alfred are summed up, without intention, by the poet whom I have already quoted. The following words of Rudyard Kipling might be the very words of Alfred; they breathe his very spirit -they might be, I say, the very words spoken by Alfred:

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Keep ye the law: be swift in all obedience

Clear the land of evil: drive the road and bridge the ford:

Make ye sure to each his own

That he reap where he hath sown:

By the Peace among our Peoples let men know we serve the Lord!"

Alfred's code was not founded on that of We King Ine, or Ina (688-726). It did not abolish the older code, but it revised and improved it; as we say now, brought it up to date. must not claim for Alfred the creation of English law.

His glory consists mainly in his adaptation of the old order to the new; he took all that was left of the shattered past and moulded it anew, with additions to suit the new situation, and for the most part on the same lines. You will ask, perhaps, how much of the honour due to Alfred's Assign to his officers all achievements should be given to his ministers and how much to himself? the credit possible, all that belongs to the faithful discharge of duty; still the initiative, the design of the whole work, is absolutely due to AlHe must not be considered as a fred himself. modern king-the modern king reigns while the people rule; he was the king who ruled, his will ruled the land, he had his Parliament, his Meeting of the Wise, but his will ruled them; he appointed his earls or aldermen, his will ruled them; he had his bishops, his will ruled them. From the time when he began to address himself to the organization of a strong nation-that is to say, from the time when the Dane was baptized, his will ruled No law existed then to limit the king's The king was imperator, commander

supreme.

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of the army, and every man in the country was his soldier.

That a new departure was deliberately adopted is proved from the opening above cited. These words, this opening, this connection of the laws of Wessex with the laws of God are the recognition of the fact that all good laws, as all good things of every kind, are the gift of God, and inspired by Him. Before Alfred's time the laws were supported by tradition, they were ancestral, they belonged to the prehistoric times, they were invented by the gods and heroes of buried time.

The closing words of Alfred's Dialogue are as follows:

"I, Alfred the King, gathered these [laws] together, and ordered many to be written which our forefathers held, such as I approved, and many which I approved not I rejected, and had other ordinances enacted with the counsel of my Witan; for I dared not venture to set much of my own upon the statute-book, for I knew not what might be approved by those who should come after us. But such ordinances as I found, either in the time of my kinsman Ian, or of Offa, King of the Mercians, or of Ethelberht, who first received Baptism in England—such as seemed to me rightest I have collected here, and the rest I have let drop.

"I, then, Alfred, King of the West Saxons, showed these laws to all my Witan, and they then said that they all approved of them as proper to be holden.”

In this place it is not necessary to consider at length the English laws of Alfred or those which followed after his time and until the Norman Conquest. The tenacity of affection with which the laws and customs of Edward the Confessor were regarded by the people, and especially by

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the people of London, was a proof that they had
Cases
become part and parcel of the national mind.
These laws were not made like our own.
brought before the Courts were conducted with
the strictest adherence to forms. The oath of the
plaintiff or defendant, backed by that of his friends,
who swore that this oath was true, constitued the
trial. There were rules as to the number of per-
sons required to stand by a man, and the number
required to balance the oath of a thegn, a ceorl, or
a theow. There were also the ordeals-that of
eating bread which would choke the perjured
man; the ordeal of cold water; the ordeal of hot
water; the ordeal of hot iron. The ordeal by
battle was not practised by the Saxons, and after
the Norman Conquest the people continually
agitated for a release from the obligation of fight-
ing an enemy or a plaintiff. All other ordeals,
the
observe, could be evaded. The water did not
scorch the arm;

always boil, nor did it always
bread did not always choke; the iron was not
intolerably hot; but in the ordeal of battle a
man had to slay or be slain. The Lord of Truth
would reveal the guilt or the innocence of the
accused; the gallows stood beside the field of
battle ready for the defeated man-a terrible
ordeal, from which there was no escape for the
perjurer.

The penalties for manslaughter and acts of
violence took the form of fines. There was a
tariff of fines. Any man's price was laid down
in accordance with his position; a thane was
worth six times as much as a common man, and
his worth counted for six common oaths before
the court; the family were helpers or avengers.
transactions in property were conducted

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