THE LEGISLATION AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT OF KING ALFRED. •
II. BY WARWICK H. DRAPER, BARRISTER-AT-!AW. THE system of local government estab lished by Alfred a thousand years ago bears in idea and even in detail a singular resemblance to that enacted in the England of to-day by recent statutes. The research of scholars has produced trustworthy evidences of what Alfred, as compared with his im mediate predecessors, did in this as in other particulars. We can clearly understand the condition of his country and his subjects. Neither at the birth nor at the death of Alfred was England a part of the main system of European politics; she took no share in the disturbing destinies of the em pire of Charles the Great. The scene was clear for the evolution of Alfred's drama of reform, and it is part of his fame that he re frained from carrying arms outside her shores. His subjects were freemen or slaves. Of the former, many were landless, bound to acknowledge a lord; the landed freemen were classified (excepting " Aethelings", princes of the royal blood) on the basis of the land which they held, the minimum be ing a single hide ( thirty to thirty-three acres). An "Eorl" possessed forty or more, a " Thegn " five or more, and a "Ceorl"less than five. There were three kinds of slaves : the "theou," or slave sim ple; the "esne," or unfrce hireling; and the " witetheou," or slave in some penal ser vitude. The system of tenure and land division was as follows, Wcssex and Mercia (one feature exccpted ) being regarded as types of the heptarchic kingdoms of England of the ninth century. The ecclesiastical unity alone combined these various kingdoms for military and other emergencies; it was
by the accidental destinies of history that Alfred of Wessex, like most of Egbert's dy nasty, exercised a supremacy in such a combination. We may concentrate our at tention upon Wessex as a leading but char acteristic state, typical of the larger whole. Absolute ownership of land in severally had been long established among the AngloSaxons, and by the ninth century was be coming the normal principle of tenure. In "Hoc-land" (/. c. posscssio] an estate created by legal process out of the public land, we see property held in a manner common to the land tenure of the German, Frankish, Danish, and other European states. But the public land of the AngloSaxon system, called "Folc-land," was characterized by incidents which appear to have been peculiar to England; it com prised, speaking briefly, the whole area that at the original allotment had not been assigned to individuals or communities, or was not subsequently divided into estates of "boc-land," and it formed the standing treasury of the country, being let in leases for lives, the ¡acorné from which fell into the public revenues. It may here be' re marked that it is in charters of the eighth century that we first hear of the " fyrd." or military service, which, with the repair of bridges and the maintenance of fortifications, formed the trinada nécessitas, materially re lieving the strain upon the public coffers. The local administration of the country thus held was based upon a system entirely analogous to that of early Germany. In the very terms that are used, there is the closest relation between the records of Alfred and the Germania of Tacitus. The unit of this local division was the "township" ("tun
