The better to guide the magistrates in the administration of justice, Alfred framed a body of laws, which, though now lost, served long as the basis of English jurisprudence, and is generally deemed the origin of what is denominated the Common Law. The similarity of these institutions to the customs of the ancient Germans, to the practice of the other Northern conquerors, and to the Saxon laws during the heptarchy, prevents us from regarding Alfred as the sole author of this plan of government, and leads us rather to think that, like a wise man, he contented himself with reforming, extending, and executing the institutions which he found previously established.
But on the whole such success attended his legislation that everything bore suddenly a new face in England. Robberies and iniquities of all kinds were repressed by the punishment or reformation of criminals; and so exact was the general police that Alfred, it is said, hung up by way of bravado golden bracelets near the highways, and no man dared touch them. Yet, amid these rigors of justice, this great prince preserved the most sacred regard to the liberties of the people; and it is a memorable sentiment preserved in his will that it was just the English should ever remain as free as their own thoughts.
As good morals and knowledge are almost inseparable in every age, though not in every individual, the care of Alfred for the encouragement of learning among his subjects was another useful branch of his legislation, and tended to reclaim the English from their former dissolute and ferocious manners. But the king was guided in this pursuit less by political views than by his natural bent and propensity toward letters.
When he came to the throne he found the nation sunk into the grossest ignorance and barbarism, proceeding from the continued disorders in the government and from the ravages of the Danes. The monasteries were destroyed, the monks butchered or dispersed, their libraries burned, and thus the only seats of erudition in those ages were totally subverted. Alfred himself complains that on his accession he knew not one person south of the Thames who could so much as interpret the Latin service, and very few in the northern parts who had reached even that pitch of erudition. But this prince invited over the most celebrated scholars from all parts of Europe; he established schools everywhere for the instruction of his people; he founded—at least repaired—the University of Oxford, and endowed it with many privileges, revenues, and immunities. He gave preferment both in Church and state to such only as made some proficiency in knowledge.
But the most effectual expedient adopted by Alfred for the encouragement of learning was his own example, and the constant assiduity with which, notwithstanding the multiplicity and urgency of his affairs, he employed himself in the pursuit of knowledge. He usually divided his time into three equal portions—one was employed in sleep, and the refection of his body by diet and exercise; another, in the dispatch of business; a third, in study and devotion. And that he might more exactly measure the hours, he made use of burning tapers of equal length, which he fixed in lanterns—an expedient suited to that rude age, when the geometry of dialing and the mechanism of clocks and watches were entirely unknown. And by such a regular distribution of his time, though he often labored under great bodily infirmities, this martial hero who fought in person fifty-six battles by sea and land, was able, during a life of no extraordinary length, to acquire more knowledge, and even to compose more books, than most studious men, though blessed with greatest leisure and application, have in more fortunate ages made the object of their uninterrupted industry. And he deemed it no wise derogatory from his other great characters of sovereign, legislator, warrior, and politician thus to lead the way to his people in the pursuit of literature.
He invited from all quarters industrious foreigners to repeople his country, which had been desolated by the ravages of the Danes. He introduced and encouraged manufactures of all kinds, and no inventor or improver of any ingenious art did he suffer to go unrewarded. He prompted men of activity to betake themselves to navigation, to push commerce into the most remote countries, and to acquire riches by propagating industry among their fellow-citizens. He set apart a seventh portion of his own revenue for maintaining a number of workmen, whom he constantly employed in rebuilding the ruined cities, castles, palaces, and monasteries. Even the elegancies of life were brought to him from the Mediterranean and the Indies; and his subjects, by seeing those productions of the peaceful arts, were taught to respect the virtues of justice and industry, from which alone they could rise. Both living and dead Alfred was regarded by foreigners, no less than by his own subjects, as the greatest prince after Charlemagne that appeared in Europe during several ages, and as one of the wisest and best that had ever adorned the annals of any nation.
OLAF TRYGGVESON, KING OF NORWAY.
By THOMAS CARLYLE.
[Earliest of the Norwegian kings who succeeded in implanting Christianity in the soil of Norse paganism. Exact date of birth unknown; died 1000 A.D. Son of Tryggve, a former under-king, or jarl, of Norway, slain by Hakon Jarl, who had usurped the supreme power about 975. Olaf spent his early years as a sea-rover, and became the most celebrated viking of his age. He conquered and slew Hakon in 995, and became king. During his reign of five years he revolutionized his kingdom. He lost his life in a great sea-battle with the combined fleets of Denmark and Norway. The facts of his career are mostly drawn from the saga of Snorro Sturleson.]
Tryggveson made a stout and, in effect, victorious and glorious struggle for himself as king. Daily and hourly vigilant to do so, often enough by soft and even merry methods—for he was a witty, jocund man, and had a fine ringing laugh in him, and clear, pregnant words ever ready—or, if soft methods would not serve, then by hard and even hardest he put down a great deal of miscellaneous anarchy in Norway, was especially busy against heathenism (devil-worship and its rites); this, indeed, may be called the focus and heart of all his royal endeavor in Norway, and of all the troubles he now had with his people there. For this was a serious, vital, all-comprehending matter; devil-worship, a thing not to be tolerated one moment longer than you could by any method help! Olaf’s success was intermittent, of varying complexion, but his effort, swift or slow, was strong and continual, and, on the whole, he did succeed. Take a sample of that wonderful conversion process:
Once, in beginning a parliamentary address, so soon as he came to touch upon Christianity the Bonders rose in murmurs, in vociferations and jingling of arms, which quite drowned the royal voice; declared they had taken arms against King Hakon the Good to compel him to desist from his Christian proposals, and they did not think King Olaf a higher man than him (Hakon the Good). The king then said, “He purposed coming to them next Yule to their great sacrificial feast to see for himself what their customs were,” which pacified the Bonders for this time. The appointed place of meeting was again a Hakon-Jarl Temple, not yet done to ruin, chief shrine in those Trondhjem parts, I believe; there should Tryggveson appear at Yule. Well, but before Yule came, Tryggveson made a great banquet in his palace at Trondhjem, and invited far and wide all manner of important persons out of the district as guests there. Banquet hardly done, Tryggveson gave some slight signal, upon which armed men strode in, seized eleven of these principal persons, and the king said: “Since he himself was to become a heathen again and do sacrifice, it was his purpose to do it in the highest form, namely, that of human sacrifice, and this time not of slaves and malefactors, but of the best men in the country!” In which stringent circumstances the eleven seized persons and company at large gave unanimous consent to baptism, straightway received the same, and abjured their idols, but were not permitted to go home till they had left, in sons, brothers, and other precious relatives, sufficient hostages in the king’s hands.