Asser, the Bishops of Winchester and Sherborne, Plegmund having journeyed to Rome the year before to obtain the sanction of Pope Sergius III. By it the two ancient dioceses of Winchester and Sherborne were replaced by five smaller ones, the bishops' seats being fixed at Winchester for Surrey and Hampshire, at Ramsbury near Marlborough for Berkshire and North Wiltshire, at Sherborne for South Wiltshire and Dorset, at Wells for Somerset and at Crediton for Devon and Cornwall. These ecclesiastical reforms would by themselves be noteworthy and a credit to Edward. They stand, however, by no means alone, his efforts to put down theft and to improve justice and trade being equally remarkable. For these we must turn to his laws[1], especially to the dooms issued at Exeter which instructed the witan to search out better devices for maintaining the peace than had hitherto been employed, and to those ordering the king's "reeves" to hold "moots" every four weeks and to see that every man was "worthy of folkright." This allusion to the moots held by the king's reeves is the first definite indication in the Anglo-Saxon laws of the existence, in Wessex or elsewhere, of any comprehensive system of local courts for areas smaller than the shires. It does not follow from this that Edward need be regarded as the inventor of these courts, but it shews at any rate that he was active in developing them, a conclusion further borne out by another of his dooms which directs that all buying and selling must take place before a "port-reeve" in a "port." Here also we have a novel provision notable for its ultimate effects: for a "port" or urban centre practically meant in most cases a "borough," and so this rule set going a movement which in the end destroyed the military character of the boroughs and converted them into centres of trade and industry.
That Wessex could devote itself for a time to internal reform was largely due to the fact that its boundaries nowhere marched with the Danelaw, but for Mercia as a buffer state the conditions were just the opposite. There, all round the frontiers there was chronic unrest, so that its duke was kept constantly busy with defensive measures. In 907 for example he fortified Chester to guard against the Welsh and raiders from Ireland, while in 910-11 he had to meet an invasion of Danes from Yorkshire and the Midlands. These bands seem to have ravaged all over the dukedom, one force penetrating to the Bristol Avon, and another across the Severn into Herefordshire. In this emergency Aethelred naturally turned to his brother-in-law for help, and there followed a pitched battle near Tettenhall in Staffordshire in which Edward's forces took a prominent part. The result was a great defeat for the Danes, no
- ↑ Liebermann, op. cit. pp. 138-145. One of these dooms (I Edw. cap 2) deserves special remark, as it contains the only mention of "foleland" to be found in the Anglo-Saxon Laws. Elsewhere the term only occurs twice, in two landbooks, dated 858 and 880 (Birch, Cart. Sax., Nos. 496, 558), dealing with estates in Kent and Surrey.
