I have failed to find that Wilkins combined the Grith with the Ordinances
of Habam. These Ordinances do not appear at all in his “Saxon Laws.” The
four laws of Ethelred which he has are (1) Liber Constitutionum, (2)
Mund, (3) Church Grith, (4) Wantage.
Now the “Liber Constitutionum” has 35 articles, of which 19 are
ecclesiastical. But Wilkins did not insert it in his “Concilia.” And yet
Lord Selborne makes no remark on its omission, but he is careful to note
the omission of the Church Grith.
III. His seventh witness is Mr. Price,[189] who commenced to edit,
under the instructions of the Record Commissioners, an edition of the
“Anglo-Saxon Laws.” Archdeacon Hale, of London, like Lord Selborne, was a
great stickler for the non-admission of any tripartite division of tithes
in England. He was mainly guided by Wilkins’s edition of 1737, and had
not even seen his “Anglo-Saxon Laws,” which were published in 1721. But
after having written strongly against the tripartite division, a friend
referred him to Ethelred’s law of 1014, in Wilkins’s “Anglo-Saxon Laws.”
He became anxious on reading it, and stopped a new edition of his work
until he could have the point clearly settled. He consulted Mr. Price,
who, on the 26th July, 1832, addressed the following letter to him:—
“It is an unauthorized assemblage of points of canon law, gathered
indifferently from foreign and home sources, and he did not think it
genuine, because Wilkins had omitted it from his new edition.”[190]
The Archdeacon seemed not to be satisfied with this formal opinion, and
so after Price’s death, which occurred soon after he had written the
above letter, he consulted another gentleman, “Whose reputation,” says
the Archdeacon, “for extensive knowledge of Anglo-Saxon literature is
not confined to his own university, or to this country, but whose name I
do not consider myself at liberty to mention. He gave me in writing an
opinion at variance with that of Mr. Price, and _was in favour of the
genuineness of the law of Ethelred_, and his opinion was founded upon
the fact of Schmid having published it in his edition of the Anglo-Saxon
Laws, and _upon the persuasion that no weight whatever was due to what
Wilkins had said or thought upon the subject_.”[191] I have always
admired the straightforward manner in which the Archdeacon placed the
whole matter before the public. A prejudiced person would have kept back
the damaging opinion of the unnamed writer. He is therefore much fairer
on this matter than Lord Selborne, Mr. Fuller, and Mr. Chancellor Dibdin,
who, while quoting Price’s opinion, _carefully avoided any reference
whatever_ to the second or favourable opinion, although it is printed in
a footnote at the page where Price’s letter appears.[192]
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