The one offence to which they dared not assign any mercy, that is, any bot, or money fine, was treason to a lord; because God Almighty adjudged no mercy to those who despised Him, nor did Christ, the Son of God, adjudge any to him who sold Him to death, and He commanded that a lord should be loved as Himself. This is a very interesting explanation of the Saxon system of money payments for offences of almost every description. It is not altogether unlike in principle to the modern magistrate-law that a dog has his first bite free. That application of the principle found no favour with King Alfred, in whose days dogs were great and dangerous beasts. If a dog tear or bite a man, for the first misdeed, 6s.; for the second, 12s.; for the third, 30s. If the dog do more misdeeds, the owner is to go on paying, or must repudiate the dog. “These many dooms I, Alfred the king, gathered together; and commanded many to be written of those our forefathers held which to me seemed good; and many of those which seemed to me not good, I rejected them by the counsel of my wise men. I durst not venture to set down much of my own, for it was unknown to me what of it would please those who should come after us.” Three characteristic dooms may be quoted. “He who steals on Sunday, or at Christmas or Easter, or on Holy Thursday,[16] or on Rogation days,[17] or during Lent, shall pay a twofold bot.” “If a man go to the church, and reveal an offence not revealed, and confess himself in God’s name, be it half forgiven.” For holidays,—“To all freemen, 12 days at Yule, and the day on which Christ overcame the devil, and the commemoration day of St. Gregory, and 7 days before Easter and 7 after, and one day at St. Peter’s tide, and one day at St. Paul’s tide, and in harvest the whole week before St. Mary-mass, and one day at the celebration of All Hallows, and the 4 Wednesdays in Ember weeks,”—forty-two days in all, making, with the addition of Sundays, just a quarter of the whole year. III HIS TRANSLATIONS AND HIS WILL His translations—Bede’s _Ecclesiastical History of the English Race_—_The Pastoral Care_—State of learning in Wessex, Mercia, and Northumbria—Ideal of a bishop’s life—Orosius—Boethius—Alfred’s religious opinions—John the Scot—Alfred’s will—Hyde Abbey—State of Rome—Religious references—Religious bequests—Slaves.