Again, Mr. Fuller says, “Alfred, with the consent of his Witan, entered into a treaty with Guthrum, by which the former ceded to the latter the provinces of East Anglia and Northumberland upon six conditions, the sixth being, ‘If any man withhold tithes, let him pay lah-slit (a fine of twenty shillings) among the Danes, and wite (a fine of thirty shillings) among the English.’”[121] Those Danes were heathen, and it seems strange that they were compelled to pay tithes to the Christian Churches. But this treaty was not concluded between Alfred and Guthrum I., but between his son Edward and a Guthrum II. “Our Title Deeds” must have been very loosely prepared. The rubric to this law states, “This is the ordinance which King Alfred and King Guthrum, and afterwards King Edward and King Guthrum, chose and ordained.”[122] “The rubrics to these laws,” says Mr. Thorpe, “are very defective in the manuscripts.”[123] “The party,” adds Mr. Thorpe, “to this treaty with Edward was apparently a second Guthrum, who, according to Wallingford, was living in Edward’s time, and probably succeeded Eohric, the immediate successor of Guthrum I.”[124] Edward the Elder succeeded his father in 901, and died in 924. The treaty was made in 907. Guthrum I. received East Anglia and Northumberland in 880, and died in 891. Selden says, “It may be seen by this that some other law preceded for the payment of tithes, or else that the right of them was otherwise supposed clear.”[125] There may have been some previous secular law which is now lost. As I have stated before, we have lost most valuable Anglo-Saxon charters and laws during the incursions of the Danes and the disturbed state of the whole country. There is a dead silence as regards tithes for 120 years between the Council of Chelsea, A.D. 787, and the treaty between Edward and Guthrum, A.D. 909. “What we now possess,” says Thorpe, “of Anglo-Saxon laws is but a portion of what once existed.”[126] ATHELSTAN’S LAW ON TITHES. Athelstan succeeded his father in A.D. 924, and in 927 published the following Ordinance:—