He CHAP.

-Until his time there were only sheriffs. separated, by the appointment of justices or judges, the judicial from the executive department of the law, and thus provided an improved administration of law and justice. That golden bracelets were hung up in the public roads, and were not pilfered, is mentioned as a fact, which evidenced the efficacy of his police.

THE unsettled state of society in Saxon-England, and that twilight of mind, which every where appears at this period, may have justified these severe provisions. They are, however, liable to such objections, that though we may admit them to have been necessary to Alfred, no modern government can wish to have them imitated. They may have suppressed robbery; they may have perpetuated public peace; but they were calculated to keep society in a bondage the most pernicious. They must have prevented that free intercourse, that incessant communication, that unrestricted travelling, which have produced so much of our political and literary prosperity. They made every hundred and tithing little insulated populations, to which all strangers were odious. By causing every

divisions of cantref, a hundred, which contained two cymmwd; each of these had twelve maenawr, and two tref; in every maenawr were four tref, or towns; in every town four gafael, each of which contained four rhandir; every rhandir was composed of sixteen acres. Thus every cantref contained, as the name imports, an hundred towns, or 25,600 acres. Leges Wallicæ, p. 157, 158. The preface to these laws states South Wales to have contained sixty-four cantrefs, and North Wales eighteen. Ibid. p. 1. The cantref and the cymmwd had each a court to determine controversies. Ibid. p. 389. On finding these in the laws of Hoel da, we are tempted to suggest they may have been introduced among the Romanised Britons; and from the Welsh bishop Asser's communications have been imitated by Alfred in his English polity.

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member of each district to become responsible for the conduct of every other, they converted neighbours into spies; they incited curiosity to pry into private conduct; and as selfishness is generally malignant, when in danger of meeting injury, they must have tended to legalise habits of censoriousness and acrimonious calumny.

THAT Alfred was assiduous to procure to his people the blessing of a correct and able administration of justice, we have the general testimony of Asser. He not only gave the precept, but he exhibited the example; he was a patient and minute arbiter in judicial investigations, and this, chiefly for the sake of the poor, to whose affairs, amongst his other duties, he day and night earnestly applied himself. 30

WHEN We reflect that Alfred had, in the beginning of his reign, transgressed on this point, he claims our applause for his noble self-correction. It was highly salutary to his subjects; "for," says Asser, "in all his kingdom, the poor had no helpers, or very few besides him. The rich and powerful, engrossed with their own concerns, were inattentive to their inferiors. They studied their private not the public good."31 The poor at this period comprised all the lay branches of population which were not gentry or noble.

ALFRED applied to the administration of justice, because it was then so little understood, and so little valued by the people, that both noble and inferior persons were accustomed to dispute pertinaciously with each other in the very tribunals of justice. What the earls and legal officers adjudged, was disregarded. All resorted to the king's judg30 Asser, 69.

31 Ibid.

ment, which was then respectfully fulfilled. Burdensome as so many legal appeals must have been, he never hesitated to sacrifice his own comfort for the welfare of his subjects. With great discernment, and wonderful patience, he examined every dispute; he reviewed the adjudications made by others in his absence. When he saw that the judges had erred, he called them mildly to him, and either personally, or by confidential persons, inquired if they had erred from ignorance, or malevolence, or avarice. When he found that ignorance had produced a wrong decision, he rebuked the judges for accepting an office for which they were unqualified, and commanded them to improve themselves by study, or to abandon their offices. 32

THE statement of Asser is in general terms. We have already alluded to the ancient law-book, the Mirroir des Justices, which presents to us many instances of Alfred's punishing judges for misconduct. Andrew Horne, who wrote this work in Norman French, in the time of Edward the Second 33 has been attacked with severity, by Dr. Hickes, because he makes the institution of juries to be anterior to the Conquest. The objections of this respectable critic are, however, weakened by the recollections that lord Coke and Spelman, before Hickes wrote, and bishop Nicholson since, have maintained, with others, that the Anglo-Saxons had juries, and we see that Horne professes to have taken his facts from the records of the court.

34

35

SOME of the cases stated in the Mirror show that

32 Asser, 70, 71.

33 It was printed in London, 1642. A translation appeared in 1646.

34 See Hickes's Dissertatio Epistolaris, p. 34-43.

35 See the Bishop's preface to Wilkins's Leges Anglo-Saxonicæ.

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Alfred's disease and death.

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Alfred was assiduous in protecting the independence, the purity, and the rights of jurymen. He punished capitally some judges for deciding criminal cases by an arbitrary violation of the right of jury.

"HE hanged Cadwine, because he condemned Hachwy to death without the assent of all the jurors, in a case where he put himself upon the jury of twelve men; and because Cadwine removed three who wished to save him against the nine, for three others into whose jury this Hachwy did not put himself."

"HE hanged Markes, because he adjudged During to death by twelve men not sworn."

"HE hanged Freberne, because he adjudged Harpin to death when the jurors were in doubt about their verdict; for when in doubt, we ought rather to save than condemn." 36

THE numerous Occupations, both public and private, to which this active-minded king directed his attention, seem sufficient to have occupied the longevity of a Nestor. Yet Alfred died at the age of fifty-two, and his life was literally a life of disease. The ficus molested him severely in his childhood. 37 After distressing him for many years, this malady disappeared, but at the age of twenty was replaced by another of the most tormenting nature. It attacked him, before all the people, suddenly with an immense pain, during, and probably caused by, the protracted banquets, day and night," of his nuptial festivities; and never left him. Its seat

36 Mirror, p. 296-298.

37 Asser, p. 40.

28 Post diuturna die noctuque convivia subito et immensa atque omnibus medicis incognito confestim coram omni populo correptus est dolore. Asser, 40. It was afflicting him in the forty-fifth year of

40

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was internal and invisible; but its agony was in- CHAP. cessant. Such was the dreadful anguish it perpetually produced, that if for one short hour it happened to intermit, the dread and horror of its inevitable return poisoned the little interval of ease. The skill of his Saxon physicians was unable to detect its nature, or to alleviate its pain. Alfred had to endure it unrelieved. 41 It is not among the least admirable circumstances of this extraordinary man, that he withstood the fiercest hostilities that ever distressed a nation, cultivated literature, discharged his public duties, and executed all his schemes for the improvement of his people, amid a perpetual agony, so distressing, that it would have disabled a common man from the least exertion. 42

his life, when Asser wrote the paragraph which mentioned it. The expressions of Asser, "daily banquets by day and night," imply that they were continued for some days; and this exhausting continuation may have given Alfred's constitution the irretrievable blow.

39 Asser describes it as incognitum enim erat omnibus qui tunc aderant et etiam huc usque quotidie cernentibus, p. 40.

40 Sed si aliquando Dei misericordia unius diei aut noctis vel etiam unius horæ intervallo illa infirmitas seposita fuerat, timor tamen ac tremor illius execrabilis doloris unquam eum non deserit. Asser. 42.

41 From this disorder continuing so long with such acute pain, without destroying him sooner; from the period of his life when it began; from its internal situation; from its horrible agony, and from its not appearing to have ceased till his death, some conjecture may be formed of it; at least, I understand, there are some diseases incident to the human frame, as internal cancer, or some derangement of the biliary functions, to which these circumstances are applicable.

42 We have referred to this place a cursory review of the former discussions between Oxford and Cambridge, which have been connected with the memory of Alfred. This dispute did not burst out publicly till the reign of Elizabeth. When the queen visited Cambridge in 1564, the orator of the university unfortunately declared in his harangue, that Cambridge truly claimed a superior antiquity to Oxford. Enraged that an attempt should have been insidiously made to prepossess the ear of majesty to its prejudice, Oxford retaliated the aggression, by asserting, in a written composition, to the queen,