Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

LAWS OF ALFEED.
This was the more remarkable in one whose cha-
P
racteristics were English of the English. The
learned men summoned by the king to supply his
own deficiencies were four Mercians, who were also
churchmen: Bishop Werfrith of Worcester, the
Monk Plegmund, Athelstan and Werwulf, priests,
Asser, the Welshman, Alfred's earliest biographer,
and from the continent, G-rimbald, Provost of St.
Omer, and John, the Old Saxon.
The laws of Alfred put the seal on his efforts in
the cause of education. They are grounded on the
Decalogue, and breathe throughout the austerity of
the Old Testament. Modern days would say that
Alfred had too great a regard for capital punishment.
It is certain that he called a spade a spade,
and would have been horrified at the proceedings of
juries who find a verdict for murder, yet recommend
1
the murderer to mercy. With English instinct, he
would not publish his laws till they had received
the sanction of his Wit an, but when once enacted
they were no dead letter. Obedience was stringently
enforced, and to bring his subjects within grasp of
the law, Alfred availed himself of the Hundred.
This was originally an association of a hundred
persons for the conservation of peace and law, and
of Teutonic institution. In process of time it was
applied to territory, much as the tithing itself came
to be used as a local division. Many similar institutions,
as, for instance, " the tithing, the frank-
pledge, the guild, and the township, are equally