In the name of our Lord Jesu Christ. I Alfred alderman and Werburg my consort purchased these books at a heathen host with our clean money, that is to say with clean gold; and that we two did for God’s love and for the benefit of our souls, and for that we would not that these holy books should longer lie in hethenesse.’ Birch, Cartularium Saxonicum, No. 634.
[2] Kemble, Codex Diplomaticus, No. 317; Birch, Cartularium Saxonicum, No. 558; Earle, Land Charters, p. 152.
[3] ‘Quoad opificium autem, tam elegans quidem id est et perfectum, ut eius antiquitatem in dubium vocandi doctis nonnullis occasionem dederit, etsi Ælfredi regis hoc olim fuisse peculium, ex quo primum vidi, nunquam dubitavi.’ Linguarum Veterum Septentrionalium Thesaurus, vol. i, p. 144.
CHAPTER II
THE EPIGRAPH OR LEGEND
We must now consider and see what we can learn from the Epigraph. This was the cue whereby Hickes introduced the Jewel into the argument of his Dissertatio Epistolaris, and there gave us the cream of the discussions which had been developed in the space of twelve years from the discovery. Observing that in a Saxon inscription which Dr. Hans Sloane had communicated to the Philosophical Transactions (No. 247) only two letters of Anglo-Saxon form occurred, the C and the G, he proceeded to describe and discuss the Jewel in all the points of view which up to that time had occupied the attention of the curious. The forms to which he adverted were the angular C and G, which however are rather Epigraphic than Saxonic forms. These square letters occur (as Mr. Falconer Madan informs me) in the inscriptions of the sixth and seventh centuries in Gaul, Spain, and Britain. Hickes added that all the other letters of the Epigraph were in ordinary Roman characters[4]:
In fact there was only one place where a distinctly Saxon character might have come in, namely in the place of the W, which instead of the Runic Wên (ƿ) is composed of two Roman V’s. There is no place for the Runic Thorn (þ).
He had been pursuing an argument, of which the aim was to show that from the time of Alfred the characteristic features of Anglo-Saxon writing were less used, being superseded by Gallic or Italic forms. He attributes the change to the teachers which the king had drawn from Gaul. That such a change was taking place in Alfred’s time is quite manifest, but its beginnings were further back; the taste for Frankish fashions having been introduced by his grandfather Ecgberht, who had passed years of exile at the Court of Charlemagne. Doubtless the movement grew under the influence of Alfred, who not only had visited Rome, but in all probability had resided there for some years.