1899.] on King Alfred. 89 



against freebooters, so that trade might be tolerably safe in time of 

 peace. As Chaucer says of his Merchant : 



" He wolde the see were kept for any thing 

 Bitwise Middleburgh and Orewell." 



It was to be a long time before Sir Walter Ealeigh made his 

 magnificent and wholly justified boast that the Invincible Armada 

 of Spain had not burnt so much as one sheepcote of this land ; and 

 longer still before we ourselves were to learn the secret of England's 

 greatness over again, not from an Englishman born, but from one 

 of our kin beyond the sea — Captain Mahan, of the United States 

 Navy. 



Great reformers hardly ever find their work run smooth, and we 

 know that Alfred did not. Incompetence, jealousy, local and 

 personal, self-seeking, and — perhaps worst of all — the complacent 

 inertness of honest but stupid men who think what was good 

 enough for their fathers good enough for them, had to be reckoned 

 with then as now. Bishops, ealdormen, king's thanes, and sheriffs, 

 even the best of them, had to be taught their duty, lectured, ordered 

 about, rebuked, in the last resort punished. The King wore himself 

 out in well-doing, and after all could not get many of his plans exe- 

 cuted. Forts designed by him were never built, or were not finished 

 in time, and those who had been in fault lamented too late that the 

 Danes had taken their wives and kindred captives, harried their land, 

 and spoiled their goods.* Bismarck is a far less noble and dignified 

 figure than Alfred, though he wrought on a greater scale ; but the 

 picture now fresh before us of Bismarck striving for the union of 

 Germany, and fretting under the pretensions of absurd princelets and 

 the pedantries of shallow politicians, will help us to realise Alfred's 

 troubles. If Alfred found a helper after his own heart it was his son- 

 in-law, iEthelred of Mercia, whose wife iEthelflaed, the lady of the 

 Mercians as she came to be called, stands out as the most brilliant 

 and heroic woman in our early history. 



Justice was among the first of Alfred's cares when there was peace 

 in the land. Here, too, the difficulties were immense. An Anglo- 

 Saxon county or hundred court must have been more like a disorderly 

 public meeting than a modern court of any kind ; there was no 

 security for any one being learned, or knowing how to conduct busi- 

 ness, unless the bishop was present; and there were no effectual 

 means of putting judgments in force.f The king and his Witan 

 could set an example : when the ordinary methods, cumbrous and 

 slow as they were, had been exhausted, the king could at need 

 compel an obstinate wrongdoer to submit ; but the king's wise men 

 were not a court of appeal. Indeed, there was no such thing as 



* Asser, ed. Wise, pp. 59, 60. 



f In the county courts of the 13th century, as wo learn from Bracton, there 

 were certain notables who practically controlled the proceedings. This may have 

 been so from a much earlier time ; we do not know that it was. 



