There was a good deal of guess work in arranging the tracts in this order. They were not written by the same hand; some were written early in the eleventh century, and others in the third quarter of the same century. The laws of Canute, Edgar, and part of Alfred’s, were written in the Conqueror’s reign. A large portion of Alfred’s laws is written in Josseline’s hand, in the 16th century, then a common practice to complete imperfect manuscripts, and the manuscript of Alfred’s laws in the Worcester volume is very imperfect. Then the laws of Athelstan and Edmund may be seen at once to be a much earlier hand, of the first quarter of the 11th century—the period assigned by Thorpe. There is a fragment of Edgar’s laws at folio 89, placed between Edmund’s and Ethelred’s, and in the same handwriting, and fully sixty years earlier than Edgar’s laws, which are at folios 15 to 41. These facts as to dates of handwriting can easily be verified by comparing them with charters of certain dates. I have compared the handwriting in the several tracts with the charters written towards the end of the 10th century, and beginning, middle, and end, of the 11th. The Church Grith law was certainly written before Canute’s death in 1035. There are several breaks in the volume between the laws of the five kings, although Lord Selborne says, “All in Anglo-Saxon, _without break_.” The first break is of six folios between the first and second parts of Alfred’s laws. Then a second break of no less than twenty-eight folios between the last part of Alfred’s and the beginning of Athelstan’s. Here, then, are two breaks of thirty-four folios, and there are seven heads of other manuscripts on different subjects which are bound up in these breaks of thirty-four folios. It is quite evident that in the Worcester volume, Nero, A. 1, we have _two incomplete sets_ of Anglo-Saxon laws, picked up by Sir Robert Cotton and thus preserved from destruction, which Lord Selborne would lead one to think were _one complete, continuous set of laws_ of these five kings. The other parts are lost. I have already given a brief sketch how our antiquarians collected, as best they could, the tons of manuscripts which belonged to the libraries of the dissolved monasteries scattered throughout the country. Here is one specimen out of many from “Our Title-Deeds,” p. 119, by which Mr. Fuller attempts “to shake the authority” of the Church Grith Law. “A document,” he says, “which Selden casts a slur upon, is surely not one upon which to rest a fact of English history.” Then in a footnote Mr. Fuller adds, “Selden calls it only a sort of document, and passed in a Council in a kind of Parliament, and tells us it remains only a manuscript of or about the time of the _Roman_ Conquest. The preface of it shall be here first noted, that the authority of it may be better understood, _i.e._ appraised at its real value.”