Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 01.djvu/172

Ælfred other style so exactly expressed the extent of Ælfred's dominion. It took in all, or nearly all, of the Saxon part of England, and not much besides. For the Mercian ealdormanship of Æthelred consisted to a great extent of lands which had been won by the West-Saxons in the first conquest, and which had afterwards passed under Mercian rule. Of the high-sounding titles which were taken by the kings who followed Ælfred we see no sign in his time. Asser however more than once speaks of him as ‘Angul-Saxonum rex,’ the earliest use of a name which, as expressing the union of Angles and Saxons under one king, became not uncommon in the next century. Asser, as a Welshman, naturally speaks of the tongue of Ælfred as Saxon, and his land as Saxony. But Ælfred himself, while with minute accuracy he uses the Saxon name in his title, always in his writings speaks of his people and their tongue as English.

As Ælfred extended the bounds of his kingdom, there can be little doubt that his reign greatly tended to the increase of the royal authority within his kingdom. This was the natural result both of his position and of his personal character. It is a mere legend which charges him with oppressive or even harsh rule at any time of his life. But when a king has won the position, both legendary and historical, of Ælfred, even the most suspicious witness against him becomes of importance. Unless we assume sheer invention for contradiction's sake, it must be an exaggeration or distortion of something. Something must have suggested the story. There seems no reason to charge Ælfred, as a great scholar (, Saxons in England, ii. 208) has done, with ‘anti-national and un-Teutonic feeling.’ But we may believe that the king who had been marked out for kingship by a papal hallowing in his childhood, and who had come to the kingship of his people by what might seem so marked a course of destiny, may from the beginning have held the kingly authority somewhat higher than the kings who had gone before him, somewhat higher than pleased all his subjects. In fact, the strengthening of the kingly power would be the almost necessary result of Ælfred's career. He made his kingdom afresh, and he enlarged its borders. Of all that was done he himself was pre-eminently the doer. We see the same thing in France under Saint Lewis, a king in whom the warlike side was less prominent than in Ælfred, and who never had to fight for the being of his kingdom. Under kings like Ælfred and Lewis the kingly power grows, simply because every man knows that the king is the power that can best be trusted. Asser emphatically says that Ælfred was the only man in his kingdom to whom the poor could look for help. The circumstances of Ælfred's reign did much also to quicken a change which was then going on both in England and in other parts of Europe. This is the change from the old immemorial nobility of birth to the new nobility of personal service, that is in England the change from eorlas to þegnas. Rank and power become attached to service due to the king as a personal lord, a process which, in the beginning at least, does much to strengthen the authority of that personal lord. But it does not appear that Ælfred was the author of any formal legal or constitutional changes. In his legislation his tone is one of singular modesty. ‘He did not dare to set down much of his own in writ, for he did not know how it would like them that came after.’ He speaks of himself as simply choosing the best among the laws of earlier kings, and as doing all that he did with the consent of his witan. And the actual legislation of Ælfred is of exactly the same character as the legislation of the earlier kings. What strikes us most in his laws as compared with the laws of his own predecessor Ine is the absence of any reference to the distinction of English and Welsh. The Britons within the immediate West-Saxon kingdom (that is, no doubt, mainly in Somerset and Devonshire) had now practically become English. And the events of Ælfred's own reign must have done much to wipe out the distinction. Fighting with the Danes had made Britons and Englishmen one people within the West-Saxon realm.

What is specially characteristic of Ælfred's laws is their intensely religious character. The body of them, like other Christian Teutonic codes, is simply the old Teutonic law, with such changes—more strictly perhaps such additions—as the introduction of Christianity made needful. What is peculiar to Ælfred's code is the long scriptural introduction, beginning with the Ten Commandments. The Hebrew law is here treated very much as an earlier Teutonic code might have been. The translation is far from being always literal; the language is often adapted to Teutonic institutions, while, on the other hand, some very inapplicable Hebrew phrases and usages are kept, and the immemorial Teutonic (or rather Aryan) institution of the wergild is said to be a merciful invention of christian bishops. This last error is specially strange, as Ælfred commonly shows a thorough knowledge of the institutions and traditions of his own people.