his time they were an unwritten code, but
he expressly says, '_that I, Alfred, collected the good laws of our
forefathers into one code, and also I wrote them down_'--which is a
decisive fact in the history of our laws well worth noting."--_Introduction
to Gilbert's History of the Common Pleas_, p. 2, _note_.

Kelham says, "Let us consult our own lawyers and historians, and they
will tell us * * that Alfred, Edgar, and Edward the Confessor, were the
great _compilers and restorers_ of the English Laws."--_Kelham's
Preliminary Discourse to the Laws of William the Conqueror_, p. 12.
_Appendix to Kelham's Dictionary of the Norman Language._

"He (Alfred) also, like another Theodosius, _collected the various
customs_ that he found dispersed in the kingdom, and reduced and
digested them into one uniform system, or code of laws, in his
_som-bec_, or _liber judicialis_ (judicial book). This he _compiled_ for
the use of the court baron, hundred and county court, the court-leet and
sheriff's tourn, tribunals which he established for the trial of all
causes, civil and criminal, in the very districts wherein the complaints
arose."--_4 Blackstone_, 411.

Alfred himself says, "Hence I, King Alfred, gathered these together, and
commanded many of those to be written down which our forefathers
observed--those which I liked--and those which I did not like, by the
advice of my Witan, I threw aside. For I durst not venture to set down
in writing over many of my own, since I knew not what among them would
please those that should come after us. But those which I met with
either of the days of me, my kinsman, or of Offa, King of Mercia, or of
AEthelbert, who was the first of the English who received baptism--those
which appeared to me the justest--I have here collected, and abandoned
the others. Then I, Alfred, King of the West Saxons, showed these to all
my Witan, and they then said that they were all willing to observe
them."--_Laws of Alfred, translated by R. Price, prefixed to
Mackintosh's History of England_, _vol._ 1. _45 Lardner's Cab. Cyc._

"King Edward * * projected and begun what his grandson, King Edward the
Confessor, afterwards completed, viz., one uniform digest or body of
laws to be observed throughout the whole kingdom, _being probably no
more than a revival of King Alfred's code_, with some improvements
suggested by necessity and experience, particularly the incorporating
some of the British, or, rather, Mercian _customs