Alfred

The code of Alfred would not fill twelve [61] pages of the statute book of Massachusetts, and was little or nothing else than a compilation of the laws of Moses, and the Saxon customs, evidently collected from considerations of convenience, rather than enacted on the principle of authority.

“Alfred cantoned his kingdom, first into Trihings and Lathes, as they are still called in Kent and other places, consisting of three or four Hundreds;

(1272 to 1307) fined and imprisoned his judges, in the same manner as Alfred the Great, among the Saxons, had done before him, by the sole exercise of his authority.

It is impossible to determine how much new law there was in the Laws of Solon, or in the Twelve Tables of Rome, or in the Laws of Alfred and Canute, or in the Salic Law which is the oldest of the so-called Leges Barbarorum, but in all probability the quantity was extremely small.

The object of the Law of Alfred is plainly the same with that aimed at by the ancient rule of Brihaspiti.

A very striking illustration of it is found in a law of Alfred, familiar to historical scholars (Kemble, ‘Saxons,’ i.

The traditional view makes Magna Carta the direct descendant of Henry Beauclerk’s Coronation Charter, which is, in turn, regarded as merely an amplification of the old coronation oath sworn by the Conqueror and his sons, in terms borrowed from a long line of Anglo–Saxon kings, stretching back from Edward Confessor to Edgar, Alfred and Egbert, until its origin is lost in the mists of antiquity.