say that William believed their John to be the Erigena, and we may almost certainly say that in that belief he was wrong. John the Erin-born is usually said to have died about 886. There is thus no difficulty on the score of dates in the way of his being at Alfred’s court. He must have been an oldish man, for he was a prominent controversialist as early as 854. Alfred’s will is on all accounts a document of very great interest. We have noticed already the provisions of his father’s will, so far as they have been preserved for us, and with these we cannot but contrast the corresponding parts of Alfred’s disposition of his property. Many details of the will we must for our present purpose pass by, notwithstanding their general importance: they are no doubt dealt with in another chapter. Alfred’s will exists in an Anglo-Saxon form and in a Latin form. It is preserved in the Register of Newminster, which Alfred founded at Winchester. This institution was afterwards moved to Hyde. The will was copied into the Register now known as the Register of Hyde Abbey, about the years 1028-1032. Ethelwulf had bequeathed considerable sums to the Church of St. Peter and the Church of St. Paul at Rome, and to the Pope. Alfred had sent presents to Rome. From 883 to 890 there are four records of West Saxon gifts. But after 890 there is no record, and in Alfred’s will no mention is made of the chief city of the Western world or of the spiritual head of the Church of the West. One explanation may be that at his death the sad period had already begun which makes men of all Christian creeds hang their heads with shame that such things could be. King Alfred’s court was unique among secular courts in its purity and order; the papal court had entered upon one of those phases in its existence where it has stood out prominently among the most impure and disorderly spots on the face of the known earth. It is enough, for any one who knows the meaning of the references, to glance at the table of contents of a Church history for the years 896 and 897:—“Death of Pope Formosus; Pope Boniface VII.; trial and condemnation of the body of Formosus by Pope Stephen VI.; Pope Stephen strangled; Pope Romanus; Pope Theodorus II.; Pope John IX.; Pope Sergius IV.; Marquisate of Tusculum; Theodora and Marozia.” We can well understand that not all Alfred’s reverence for the place where lay the bodies of St. Peter and St. Paul could overcome the effect of a record so grievous as that.