Chapter IV, Miscellaneous Sources for the Reign of King Alfred Summary and Analysis

The first part of Chapter IV contains extracts from King Alfred's laws. His law-code was probably put together near the end of the 880s or early in the 890s and represents how Alfred tried to produce social order along with representing his political and ideological goals. The code has 120 sub-chapters, the first 43 of which are Alfred's laws and the rest of which are the laws of Ine, the West Saxon king. What follows is a variety of quotes from the Law of Moses and the Ten Commandments. Alfred considers how Old Testament law can be applied to Christian nations. Alfred begins the legal code by claiming that he gathered the laws together that he himself did not create and divides them into those...