A history of tithes

by Henry William Clarke

Lord Selborne’s “Ancient Facts and Fictions.”

He has published a book on “Ancient Facts and Fictions concerning Churches and Tithes,” in which he has devoted a large portion to prove that the Church Grith law of A.D. 1014 “was either a draft or project of laws which the framer, evidently an ecclesiastic of Ælfric’s school, wished to have enacted.... There is indeed now written in the margin of that manuscript,[181] in a small modern hand, the date ‘Aᵒ. Dom. 1014.’”[182] I have often examined the manuscript, and found the reading to be “Aⁿᵒ. dni. 1014.” Lord Selborne gives the reading as it is printed in the Catalogue, but decidedly it is not the reading in the manuscript. It is supposed to have been written by Josseline, secretary to Archbishop Parker. There is internal evidence in article 43 to support this date (1014), viz. “But let us do as is needful to us; let us take to us for an example that which former secular Witan deliberately instituted. Athelstan and Edmund, and Edgar who was last,” etc.

Ethelred had returned from exile in the spring of 1014, after which this law was passed.

In reference to the above words in italics, Lord Selborne says that Edward (975-979) reigned between Edgar and Ethelred, and therefore Edgar could not have been the last;[183] but it must be remarked also that Edred and Edwy who reigned between Edmund and Edgar, are also omitted in this 43rd article. Then why had the framers of the whole law particularized the names of Athelstan, Edmund, and Edgar, and leave out Edred, Edwy, and Edward? If we look at the arrangement of the Anglo-Saxon laws, we find the order as above, viz., the laws of Athelstan, next those of Edmund, and next the laws of Edgar, none by Edward, then come the laws of Ethelred. The 43rd Article referred to these laws, and therefore Edgar’s were the last. So there is no force in Lord Selborne’s remarks.

King Ethelred’s law on the threefold division of tithes has been found so important in the discussion on the tripartite division that Lord Selborne has devoted all his eminent legal powers, though unsuccessfully, to upset this Anglo-Saxon law. (1) His first witnesses are Selden, Spelman, Lambarde, Wheelock, and John Johnson.

“Selden and Spelman,” says Lord Selborne, “were well acquainted with the Worcester (Cottonian) manuscript; and as neither of them made mention of this Church Grith document, it may be inferred that they did not regard it as having the character or the authority of a law.”[184]

“If Lambarde, Wheelock, and John Johnson,” continues Lord Selborne, “were acquainted with either manuscript—Church and Mund, and Church Grith—(the contrary supposition is improbable), the inference as to them also, from their silence about it (i.e. the Church Grith) must be the same,” i.e. that “they did not regard it as having the character or the authority of a law.”[185]

I shall examine these five writers seriatim.

(1) John Selden published his “History of Tithes” in 1618. I have already proved that the Church Grith law was not in Sir Robert Cotton’s library in 1632. It was therefore impossible for Selden to have seen it in the “Worcester manuscript.” The “Worcester (Cottonian) manuscript” is a very vague and loose way to express the Worcester (Cottonian) volume Nero, A. 1. The fact is that Selden had never seen or heard of the Church Grith law, otherwise he would unquestionably have referred to such a law in his “History of Tithes.” In dealing with Egbert’s Excerptions, Selden has quoted largely in his “History of Tithes” from this very volume, which contained the Excerptions, and which volume in his time had no particular name. In his marginal quotation he merely informs his readers that they were taken from a “MS. in the Biblioth. Cottoniana.” We have lost the advantage of his valuable opinion on the Church Grith law, by its absence from the volume from which he had made large quotations on other subjects. I agree with Lord Selborne that Mr. Selden was well acquainted with the contents of the volume; but I totally disagree with his lordship’s inference as regards Selden’s silence on the Grith Law, because that law was not in the volume for him to see or read; nor was it in the library.

(2) Sir Henry Spelman published his first volume of the “Concilia” in 1639. In this volume he gives only two of King Ethelred’s laws out of the nine given by Thorpe. As a matter of fact, he, like Selden, had never seen or heard of the Church Grith law. Spelman was one of Sir Robert’s most intimate friends, and had access to every manuscript and book in his library. Lord Selborne assumes without any authority that the so-called Worcester volume in Cotton’s Library, open to the inspection of Selden and Spelman, contained all the manuscripts which it now contains. If Lord Selborne had only taken the trouble of reading the original list of manuscripts on the first page of the volume, he would see at once that the Church Mund and Church Grith are not in the list of manuscripts contained then in that volume. Therefore Selden and Spelman could not have seen them. The original list, and no more, is in the catalogue of 1632.

(3) William Lambarde, the Kent antiquarian, published his collection of Anglo-Saxon Laws in 1568, in which the Church Grith law does not appear, from which Lord Selborne again infers that Lambarde did not regard it as having the character or the authority of a law. Let us apply his Lordship’s canon of criticism to other omissions made by Lambarde in his collection of Anglo-Saxon laws, and then see to what conclusions such inferences lead.

He omitted the Laws of the Kentish Kings, the Laws of William the Conqueror and of Henry I. Then are we to infer that Lambarde saw these “documents,” but would not notice them in his collection because “he did not regard them as having the character or authority of laws”?

This is really the logical sequence of Lord Selborne’s inferential canon of criticism, as regards Lambarde’s omission of the Church Grith law. The fact is that he, like Selden and Spelman, had never seen the law.

(4) Wheelock published a second edition of Lambarde’s “Laws” in 1644, in which he added the laws of the Conqueror and of Henry I., but omitted the laws of the Kentish kings. Why? Must the answer be according to Lord Selborne’s canon of criticism, viz., that “he regarded them as not having the character or the authority of laws”? No. He, like Lambarde, had not seen the Kentish laws or the Church Grith law.

(5) John Johnson published a “Collection of the Laws and Canons of the Church of England,” in 1720, mainly founded upon Spelman’s “Concilia.”

Mr. John Baron, in his new edition of Johnson’s collection, published in 1850, says, “Mr. Thorpe publishes some ecclesiastical laws of King Ethelred at pp. 129, 141, 145, which were altogether unknown to Johnson”[186] There is at p. 129 “Liber Constitutionum”; at p. 141 “Grith and Mund”; at p. 145 “Church Grith.”

Mr. Baron’s edition is quoted probably one hundred times by Lord Selborne in his “Facts and Fictions” and “Church Defence,” and he must unquestionably have read Baron’s Prefatory statement that “Grith and Mund” and “Church Grith laws” were unknown to Johnson. Yet in the face of that statement, Lord Selborne says, “If Lambarde, Wheelock, and John Johnson were acquainted with either manuscript (the contrary supposition is improbable), the inference is that they did not regard it (Grith law) as having the character or the authority of a law.” I have taken these five authors seriatim, and the general conclusion is that the Grith law was unknown to each and all of them.

II. His sixth witness is Wilkins. Lord Selborne says:—

“David Wilkins was the first to publish the Church Grith in his ‘Leges Anglo-Saxonica,’ where he combined it in a manner, for which the manuscripts afforded no warrant, with the Ordinances of ‘Habam,’ etc. If he had regarded it as an authentic ecclesiastical law when he afterwards (in A.D. 1737) published his great collection of ‘Acts of Councils’ and other English ecclesiastical documents, it must have found a place there, which it does not.”[187]

Dr. Wilkins was also the first to publish the laws of the Kentish kings.

Mr. Thorpe says of Wilkins’s “Concilia,” “As a monument of industry this edition is very creditable to Dr. Wilkins; at the same time it must, though reluctantly, be acknowledged by every one competent to judge, that as a translator of Anglo-Saxon he not unfrequently betrays an ignorance even of its first principles, that though not unparalleled, is perfectly astounding.”[188]

I shall now examine the above statement of Lord Selborne.

I have failed to find that Wilkins combined the Grith with the Ordinances of Habam. These Ordinances do not appear at all in his “Saxon Laws.” The four laws of Ethelred which he has are (1) Liber Constitutionum, (2) Mund, (3) Church Grith, (4) Wantage.

Now the “Liber Constitutionum” has 35 articles, of which 19 are ecclesiastical. But Wilkins did not insert it in his “Concilia.” And yet Lord Selborne makes no remark on its omission, but he is careful to note the omission of the Church Grith.

III. His seventh witness is Mr. Price,[189] who commenced to edit, under the instructions of the Record Commissioners, an edition of the “Anglo-Saxon Laws.” Archdeacon Hale, of London, like Lord Selborne, was a great stickler for the non-admission of any tripartite division of tithes in England. He was mainly guided by Wilkins’s edition of 1737, and had not even seen his “Anglo-Saxon Laws,” which were published in 1721. But after having written strongly against the tripartite division, a friend referred him to Ethelred’s law of 1014, in Wilkins’s “Anglo-Saxon Laws.” He became anxious on reading it, and stopped a new edition of his work until he could have the point clearly settled. He consulted Mr. Price, who, on the 26th July, 1832, addressed the following letter to him:—

“It is an unauthorized assemblage of points of canon law, gathered indifferently from foreign and home sources, and he did not think it genuine, because Wilkins had omitted it from his new edition.”[190]

The Archdeacon seemed not to be satisfied with this formal opinion, and so after Price’s death, which occurred soon after he had written the above letter, he consulted another gentleman, “Whose reputation,” says the Archdeacon, “for extensive knowledge of Anglo-Saxon literature is not confined to his own university, or to this country, but whose name I do not consider myself at liberty to mention. He gave me in writing an opinion at variance with that of Mr. Price, and was in favour of the genuineness of the law of Ethelred, and his opinion was founded upon the fact of Schmid having published it in his edition of the Anglo-Saxon Laws, and upon the persuasion that no weight whatever was due to what Wilkins had said or thought upon the subject.”[191] I have always admired the straightforward manner in which the Archdeacon placed the whole matter before the public. A prejudiced person would have kept back the damaging opinion of the unnamed writer. He is therefore much fairer on this matter than Lord Selborne, Mr. Fuller, and Mr. Chancellor Dibdin, who, while quoting Price’s opinion, carefully avoided any reference whatever to the second or favourable opinion, although it is printed in a footnote at the page where Price’s letter appears.[192]

Reinhold Schmid, to whom the Archdeacon’s second referee referred, was Professor of Laws at Jena, and published at Leipzig in 1832 an edition of the “Anglo-Saxon Laws.” “This edition,” says Mr. Thorpe, “is a very creditable publication, decidedly superior to the preceding ones (i.e. Lambarde’s and Wilkins’s). The version is free from the gross errors of Wilkins and generally correct.”[193]

This statement corroborates the independent testimony of the Archdeacon’s unnamed writer.

IV. Lord Selborne’s eighth witness is Professor Freeman, of Oxford.

“Mr. Freeman,” says Lord Selborne, “who seems to have accepted the date A.D. 1014 as evidence that the document represents some public act of that year, was also led to the conclusion that these were ‘hardly laws at all,’ but mere ‘advice,’ and an expression of pious and patriotic feeling, a promise of national amendment rather than legislation strictly so called.”[194]

I shall give some extracts from Mr. Freeman’s letter written in 1885, directly referring to the Church Grith law, and then I shall contrast such opinions with those expressed on the same subject in the last edition of his “Norman Conquest,” published in 1877. The reader can then form his own conclusion with regard to the letter and the historical statement.

“The only case” he says in his letter, “of the action of the State in the ancient laws is that to which I have referred in the laws of Ethelred.[195] Here the sixth enactment of 1014, under the head of Church Grith, clearly ordains the threefold division, and that with solemnity.

“Here then at last we come to the threefold division of the tithe enjoined by secular as well as by ecclesiastical authority. But something is wanting to make legislation perfect. If we look on a little further to the next clause but one, we shall find a strict enactment about the payment of tithes, and not only an enactment, but a means prescribed for carrying the enactment into force. But this is simply copied from an earlier law of Edgar.[196] And in the law of 1014 it stands almost alone as a real piece of legislation with a sanction. In truth these laws, of which I have found something to say elsewhere,[197] are hardly laws at all. As was not wonderful, under the peculiar circumstances of the time, they are rather an expression of pious and patriotic feeling (see the last clause), a kind of promise of national amendment than legislation, strictly so called. They go along with the discourses of Archbishop Elfric, good advice rather than legislation, rather than with those codes which not only make decrees, but provide means for executing them. In such a collection of recommendations rather than of real statutes we are not at all surprised to find the threefold division of tithe. But it is nowhere found in any of those codes which are real acts of legislation, providing the means for carrying out what is ordained, etc.”

Mr. Freeman, in his long private letter, has produced no proof whatever to upset the Church Grith as a proper legal enactment. He has not stated what the something was to make the legislation perfect. If he means that no provision was made to carry out what was ordained, he contradicts himself, because he distinctly states above what is true, that as regards the sixth law for the payment of tithes, “means were prescribed, copied from Edgar’s laws, for carrying the enactment into force.”

It was quite common for an Anglo-Saxon king and his Witenagemót to re-enact some of the laws of his predecessors. So Ethelred re-enacted Edgar’s law as to the punishment which would follow the non-payment of tithes. And Cnute re-enacted wholesale the laws of his predecessors.

The most remarkable, inconsistent, and contradictory part of this letter is the abrupt jump which the writer takes from statements he was making in support of the Grith laws, to the statement, “In truth these laws are hardly laws at all.”

I now turn to Mr. Freeman’s “Norman Conquest” to find what he has written in it about this law. In it we get the mature thoughts of the historian, before Lord Selborne’s books appeared.

“It was most likely,” says Mr. Freeman, “in a Gemót held on his return, that the King and his Witan passed the laws which bear the date of this year.[198] They relate mainly to ecclesiastical matters, but they contain the same pious and patriotic resolutions as the codes of former years, and they also contain some clauses of a special and remarkable kind. He expressly approves the conduct of certain earlier assemblies held under Athelstan, Edmund, and Edgar, which dealt with ecclesiastical and temporal affairs conjointly, and they seem to deplore a separation between the two branches of legislation which had taken place in some later assemblies.” He then refers to sections 36, 37, and 38 of the Church Grith, and adds, “cf. sec. 43, where the three kings are named.”

“The laws of this year (1014) again proclaim that one God and one King is to be loved and obeyed.”

“Such is the general summary of the last recorded legislation of Ethelred, conceived in exactly the same tone as the laws of earlier assemblies.”[199]

Here there is no reference whatever that in this last recorded legislation of Ethelred, “they were hardly laws at all, but rather an expression of pious and patriotic feeling, a kind of promise of national amendment, than legislation strictly so called.”

The two statements—one in the History, and the other in a private letter—are contradictory. Contradictory statements coupled with an immense display of pedantry and egotism, characterize the recent writings of this author.[200]

Historians must be kept to the opinions expressed in their published histories until they publicly repudiate them. This Mr. Freeman has not yet done. Private letters which contradict them, are not only worthless, but are injurious. Historians who adopt this plan place themselves in a false position before the public. They cannot run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. They cannot consistently address private letters to clerical tithe-owners expressing opinions against the threefold division of tithes, and Church Grith law, which contradict their historical opinions and statements.

V. The next witnesses produced by Lord Selborne are the Old Latin Translators of the Anglo-Saxon laws. “An earlier collection,” he says, “of the Anglo-Saxon laws, translated into Latin in the twelfth century, of which Bromton may be presumed to have made use (though by giving the Habam Ordinances he has shown that he had also access to other materials) contains, with that exception, the same laws which are in Bromton.”

“The Latin translators, therefore, if they were acquainted, as is possible, with the documents omitted in both collections (i.e. in their Anglo-Saxon laws, and in Bromton’s), but classed by more modern compilers among the public acts of King Ethelred’s reign, did not regard them as possessing that character in any such sense as to make it fit that they should find a place in a code of Anglo-Saxon laws; and it may be inferred that they found no such place in any records of a public nature to which those translators had access.”[201]

Here, again, his lordship resorts to his stereotyped formula, when laws are omitted by writers that “They did not regard them as possessing the character of laws.” I have already shown the several omissions made by various writers in their collections of Anglo-Saxon laws, because they were unknown to them. If we adopt Lord Selborne’s canon of criticism, we must not only sweep away the Church Grith law, but actually five of King Ethelred’s laws, because they do not appear in the old Latin version!

I have carefully compared Thorpe’s collection with the old Latin version, and the following is the result. There are fifteen Anglo-Saxon laws in Thorpe’s collection which are omitted in the old Latin version; viz., the Laws of the Kentish kings—Ethelbert, Lothere, Edric, and Withred. King Alfred’s Scriptural Laws, King Athelstan’s Decretum Cantianum and Decretum Sapientum Angliæ, King Edmund’s Concilium Culintonense, King Edgar’s Supplemental Laws, King Ethelred’s Liber Constitutionum, Council of Enham, Church and Mund, Church Grith, and Council at Habam; King Cnute’s Forest Laws.

Applying Lord Selborne’s canon of criticism, we are bound to repudiate every one of these fifteen laws, because they are not in the old Latin version. He cannot draw the line at the Church Grith law, and not include the others.

In the face of these facts, Lord Selborne adds: “The Ancient Latin Version of the Anglo-Saxon laws was evidently meant to be complete, and which does contain all the legislature properly so called of Ethelred’s predecessors from Alfred downwards (why not also before Alfred?), and also of Canute.”[202] Lord Selborne does not tell us who the Latin translators were, and what opportunities they had, or what materials were at their command to make their code complete. What official position did they occupy? But we know, as an unquestionable fact, that the Latin version was not complete, and that up to 1840 we have not had a complete code of Anglo-Saxon laws from extant manuscripts until Mr. Thorpe’s was published under the direction and authority of the Commission of Public Records.

“The undoubted legislation Acts,” he further adds, “of King Ethelred’s reign (viz., the Ordinances of Woodstock and Wantage), and also that to which the Latin date A.D. 1008 is prefixed, have general titles in the Anglo-Saxon text, signifying that they were passed by the king in the national Witenagemót. But the title of the document numbered IX.[203] by Mr. Thorpe, is very different.”[204] This is not correct, for the law numbered IX. in Thorpe’s, has this title, “This is one of the Ordinances which the King of the English composed with the counsel of his Witan.”[205] Now, let us compare this title with those of (1) Woodstock, (2) Wantage, and (3) the Law of A.D. 1008, which Lord Selborne admits to be genuine. (1) “This is the Ordinance which King Ethelred and his Witan ordained.”[206] (2) “These are the laws which King Ethelred and his Witan have decreed at Wantage.”[207] (3) “This is the Ordinance that the King of the English and both the ecclesiastical and lay Witan have chosen and advised.”[208] These facts completely refute Lord Selborne’s statements. The general title to the Church Grith law, with the name of the King and Witan, is as strong as that of any of the admitted legal Acts stated by Lord Selborne. Again, if we compare the title of the Church Grith with that of Athelstan’s law, it is even stronger and in much better legal form. Here it is: “I, Athelstan, King, with the counsel of Wulfhelm, archbishop, and of my other bishops, make known to the reeves,” etc.[209] Selden, Kemble, and Bishop Stubbs admit, but Lord Selborne denies, the above to be a genuine law of King Athelstan. Lord Selborne criticises the titles of Anglo-Saxon laws made nearly 1,000 years ago in the same critical and technical manner as he would one passed at the present time. Here is an example. The Church Grith law begins thus: “This is one of the ordinances which the King of the English composed with the counsel of his Witan.” Here is Lord Selborne’s note: “This form of expression is singular. I do not think that anything exactly like it is to be found elsewhere.”[210] The usual style is, “This is the ordinance,” etc., or, “These are the ordinances,” etc. But there is really no practical difference.

VI. The next witness is John Bromton, abbot of Jervaulx in Yorkshire, who lived towards the end of the fourteenth century. His history comprises the period from A.D. 588 to A.D. 1198. Brompton copied his collection of Anglo-Saxon laws[211] from the Latin version. But he alone has the text of the Ordinances passed at Habam. He has four of the nine laws of Ethelred.

Lord Selborne says: “Bromton knew no laws of the reign of King Ethelred, except those of Woodstock and Wantage, the Treaty with the Norwegian kings—Anlaf, Justin, and Guthmund (all purely secular), and the Ordinances of Habam, which he only preserved.”[212]

The Ordinances of Habam are found only in Bromton’s history, and they contain one important provision as to tithes and other Church dues. Art. 4: “And we charge that every man, for the love of God and all His saints, give church-scot, and his rightful tithe as it stood in the days of our ancestors, when it stood best; that is, as the plough shall pass through the tenth acre, and let every customary due be paid for the love of God to our mother-church to which it is near. And let no one take away from God what belongs to God, and our ancestors have granted.”[213]

This Ordinance would indicate a spirit of revolt against the payment of tithes, and that the provisions made by previous kings for their payment were set at defiance. I do not agree with Lord Selborne that this Ordinance grants all the tithes and dues to the nearest mother-church, and thereby cancels or disregards Edgar’s law as to the payment of one-third of the tithes to the manorial church with burial ground.[214] The revolt about paying the customary dues or tithes was against payment to the mother-churches and not to the manorial churches. This is a vital distinction as indicating an early revolt against the spiritual parochial endowments having been given to churches which did no spiritual duties in the manorial parishes for them.

Owing to the same spirit of setting the tithe-law at defiance, we find a re-enactment of Edgar’s stern law to enforce the payment of tithes in the 6th article of the Church Grith, and a second re-enactment by Cnute. It would be most unreasonable, and indeed absurd, to assume that the Habam Ordinances ignored the claims of the manorial churches to a third of the parochial tithes. The manorial churches in the beginning of the 11th century were too numerous to be deprived of their portions of the tithes, especially in 1014, when Ethelred, after returning from exile, tried to conciliate the clergy.

Dr. Lingard’s opinion is valuable upon this point. “It was probably thought,” he says, “that a law so precise (as Edgar’s), and so severe—a forfeiture of eight-tenths of the crop—would insure for the future the exact payment of the tithe; but its subsequent re-enactment in the reign of Ethelred,[215] and again in the reign of Canute, will justify a suspicion that in many places its provisions were set at defiance, and in many but imperfectly enforced.”[216]

Mr. Fuller, in “Our Title-Deeds,” regards Dr. Lingard’s silence about the Church Grith law as “inexplicable in every way.” The above quotation, as regards this law, clearly proves the charge to be groundless.

As Bromton had copied his Anglo-Saxon laws from the old Latin version, he has not fourteen of the fifteen laws which were omitted in that version.[217]

“It may be asserted,” says Lord Selborne, “without risk of error, that no part of the Worcester volume, Nero, A. 1 of the Cottonian collection was written before the end of Cnute’s reign, who died in 1035, for the volume begins with Cnute’s laws, which are followed by those of Edgar, Alfred, Athelstan, Edmund, Ethelred; and after them Grith and Mund, and Church Grith:—all in Anglo-Saxon, without break, and in that order.”[218]

Every reader of “Facts and Fictions” cannot consult the Worcester volume to judge for himself whether this statement is correct or not. Readers generally accept as true what men of position and education publish, without investigating—for they have not time—the truth of the subject-matter. Mr. Fuller makes the following candid admission: “In Thorpe’s ‘Anglo-Saxon Laws,’ i. 342, the tripartite division seems expressly sanctioned by law; it will be therefore necessary for us to investigate this important fact, and see if it is not possible to shake its authority and bearing on the case.”[219] This is exactly the spirit with which certain writers attack the law. Let us test the above quotation from “Facts and Fictions.” The volume contains 184 folios quarto. Folios 1 to 39 form the first tract in the volume; 42 to 56 the second; 57 to 68b the third; 71 to 97b the fourth, etc.

There was a good deal of guess work in arranging the tracts in this order. They were not written by the same hand; some were written early in the eleventh century, and others in the third quarter of the same century. The laws of Canute, Edgar, and part of Alfred’s, were written in the Conqueror’s reign. A large portion of Alfred’s laws is written in Josseline’s hand, in the 16th century, then a common practice to complete imperfect manuscripts, and the manuscript of Alfred’s laws in the Worcester volume is very imperfect. Then the laws of Athelstan and Edmund may be seen at once to be a much earlier hand, of the first quarter of the 11th century—the period assigned by Thorpe. There is a fragment of Edgar’s laws at folio 89, placed between Edmund’s and Ethelred’s, and in the same handwriting, and fully sixty years earlier than Edgar’s laws, which are at folios 15 to 41. These facts as to dates of handwriting can easily be verified by comparing them with charters of certain dates. I have compared the handwriting in the several tracts with the charters written towards the end of the 10th century, and beginning, middle, and end, of the 11th. The Church Grith law was certainly written before Canute’s death in 1035. There are several breaks in the volume between the laws of the five kings, although Lord Selborne says, “All in Anglo-Saxon, without break.” The first break is of six folios between the first and second parts of Alfred’s laws. Then a second break of no less than twenty-eight folios between the last part of Alfred’s and the beginning of Athelstan’s. Here, then, are two breaks of thirty-four folios, and there are seven heads of other manuscripts on different subjects which are bound up in these breaks of thirty-four folios.

It is quite evident that in the Worcester volume, Nero, A. 1, we have two incomplete sets of Anglo-Saxon laws, picked up by Sir Robert Cotton and thus preserved from destruction, which Lord Selborne would lead one to think were one complete, continuous set of laws of these five kings. The other parts are lost. I have already given a brief sketch how our antiquarians collected, as best they could, the tons of manuscripts which belonged to the libraries of the dissolved monasteries scattered throughout the country.

Here is one specimen out of many from “Our Title-Deeds,” p. 119, by which Mr. Fuller attempts “to shake the authority” of the Church Grith Law. “A document,” he says, “which Selden casts a slur upon, is surely not one upon which to rest a fact of English history.” Then in a footnote Mr. Fuller adds, “Selden calls it only a sort of document, and passed in a Council in a kind of Parliament, and tells us it remains only a manuscript of or about the time of the Roman Conquest. The preface of it shall be here first noted, that the authority of it may be better understood, i.e. appraised at its real value.”

Mr. Fuller’s book is dedicated to Lord Selborne, who truly states that Mr. Selden, in his “History of Tithes,” made no mention of the Church Grith document.[220] Of course, Mr. Fuller is romancing as usual. Miserable efforts “to shake the authority” of a law. There is not one word of truth in the whole of the above quotations. “Roman Conquest!” Utter nonsense.