Mr. Freeman, in his long private letter, has produced no proof whatever to upset the Church Grith as a proper legal enactment. He has not stated what the _something_ was to make the legislation perfect. If he means that no provision was made to carry out what was ordained, he contradicts himself, because he distinctly states above what is true, that as regards the sixth law for the payment of tithes, “means were prescribed, copied from Edgar’s laws, for carrying the enactment into force.” It was quite common for an Anglo-Saxon king and his Witenagemót to re-enact some of the laws of his predecessors. So Ethelred re-enacted Edgar’s law as to the punishment which would follow the non-payment of tithes. And Cnute re-enacted wholesale the laws of his predecessors. The most remarkable, inconsistent, and contradictory part of this letter is the abrupt jump which the writer takes from statements he was making _in support_ of the Grith laws, to the statement, “In truth these laws are hardly laws at all.” I now turn to Mr. Freeman’s “Norman Conquest” to find what he has written in it about this law. In it we get the mature thoughts of the historian, before Lord Selborne’s books appeared. “It was most likely,” says Mr. Freeman, “in a Gemót held on his return, that the King and his Witan passed the laws which bear the date of this year.[198] They relate mainly to ecclesiastical matters, but they contain the same pious and patriotic resolutions as the codes of former years, and they also contain some clauses of a special and remarkable kind. He expressly approves the conduct of certain earlier assemblies held under Athelstan, Edmund, and Edgar, which dealt with ecclesiastical and temporal affairs conjointly, and they seem to deplore a separation between the two branches of legislation which had taken place in some later assemblies.” He then refers to sections 36, 37, and 38 of the Church Grith, and adds, “cf. sec. 43, where the three kings are named.” “The laws of this year (1014) again proclaim that one God and one King is to be loved and obeyed.” “_Such is the general summary of the last recorded legislation of Ethelred, conceived in exactly the same tone as the laws of earlier assemblies._”[199] Here there is no reference whatever that in this last recorded legislation of Ethelred, “they were hardly laws at all, but rather an expression of pious and patriotic feeling, a kind of promise of national amendment, than legislation strictly so called.” The two statements—one in the History, and the other in a private letter—are contradictory. Contradictory statements coupled with an immense display of pedantry and egotism, characterize the recent writings of this author.[200]