“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.