The most needful of the works of peace is, as men have often learnt by bitter experience, to be prepared for war. Not only the works of peace, but peace itself, are impossible except under the guarantee of an adequate military and naval force. We have said enough already of Alfred’s efforts to reorganise his kingdom on this side.
Civil reorganisation. The shire system. Legislation not very important in early times.
Much too would be needed in the way of civil reorganisation, especially in the non-West-Saxon districts which had been won from the Danes. And this fact is probably the basis of the legend which makes Alfred the inventor of shires, hundreds, and tithings[551]. Indeed, in the districts which previously had formed part of Mercia, it is probable that the shire system was introduced for the first time, either now or a little later. For, as Mr. Taylor has pointed out[552], whereas every existing shire division south of the Thames is mentioned in the oldest MS. of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle before the first change of hand at the year 892, there is no mention of any Mercian shire in any MS. of the Chronicle prior to 1000. Legislation too would be required, though we must always remember that legislation, as we understand it, played a very small part in Anglo-Saxon times. The idea of a code or body of statutes covering all departments of civil life was quite foreign to their notions, and every attempt to explain the existing Anglo-Saxon laws on any such hypothesis must be a failure. Into the details of Alfred’s laws I do not propose to enter. To do so with any profit would require more space than I can afford, and a minuter knowledge of the earlier and later laws than I can pretend to. Indeed, I must confess that the study of the Anglo-Saxon laws often reduces me to a state of mental chaos. I may know, as a rule, the meaning of individual words; I can construe, though not invariably, the separate sentences. But what it all comes to is often a total mystery. The reason (apart from my own shortcomings) is to be sought in the fact alluded to above, that a very small part of Anglo-Saxon life and institutions is to be found in the laws, which imply a whole body of unwritten custom, of which only the most salient changes are registered in the laws. And as this body of unwritten custom is, to a large extent, beyond our reach, it is not surprising that the written law, to which it was the key, should often be obscure.
Alfred’s laws probably passed late in his reign.
§ 80. The date of Alfred’s laws is unfortunately nowhere given. But it must be comparatively late in his reign. The introduction consists, as is well known, largely of passages taken from the Old and New Testaments, translated from the Vulgate with a degree of skill and freedom, which seems to imply some practice in the work of translation and adaptation, which, as we shall see, Alfred probably did not begin at any rate before the year 887[553]. We may therefore conjecture that the enactment of these laws should be placed either just before, or just after the last great struggle with the Danes, 892-6; for William of Malmesbury’s statement that while, as a rule, ‘inter arma silent leges,’ Alfred carried on his legislation amid the din of war[554], need not be taken for more than the rhetorical flourish which it evidently is.
Points of interest connected with them.
One or two points in the preface and in the laws may just be briefly noted. In the former there is an interesting mistranslation of the fifth commandment, the feminine relative in the last clause: ‘which the Lord thy God giveth thee,’ being taken to refer not to land (terra) but to mother (matrem); ‘honour thy father and thy mother whom the Lord gave thee[555].’ Was it the thankful thought of his own noble mother Osburh which prompted this mistake?
The insertion among the causes which excuse the non-return of a deposit, of the case of its having been captured by the enemy[556], throws light on the circumstances of the time, as does the provision of one of the laws that, for certain offences, the punishment is doubled when the ‘fyrd’ is out[557]. Characteristic too of the times is the fact that treason against the lord is ‘boot-less[558],’ i.e. incapable of being atoned for by money-payment, and the provision against harbouring the king’s fugitives[559]. Nor is it surprising that Alfred the truth-teller should be specially severe against falsehood; if any man commits folk-leasing, i.e. public slander, he is to suffer no lighter punishment than the loss of the offending member[560].
At the end of the Apostolic letter, which Alfred translates from Acts xv, is found a version of the golden rule in its negative form, ‘that which ye would not that other men should do to you, do not ye to other men[561].’ This is not, as is often alleged[562], an insertion made by Alfred from the Sermon on the Mount[563], but is an addition to the text of Acts, found in some Greek and Old Latin MSS., from the latter of which it passed into some MSS. of the Vulgate[564]. Most characteristic of Alfred’s thought is the comment: ‘by this one law any one may know how he ought to judge another; he needs no other law book.’
Alfred’s administration of justice.