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.”