Whether the priests formed originally a part of the Witan is difficult to determine, but unquestionably they did so after Christianity was received among the Saxons; for within six years after Augustin’s arrival (A. D. 597) Ethelbert, king of Kent, having summoned a council “tam _Cleri_, quam Populi,” distinguished himself as the promulgator of the earliest written laws of the Anglo-Saxons which are now extant. Of the lawgivers next following him, Hlothære and Eadric, as well as Whitræd, little beyond their names is known; but about a century after Ethelbert’s time, Ina promulgated a fresh and more extensive Code of Laws, “suasu et instituto _Episcoporum_, omnium Senatorum et natu majorum sapientium populi; in magnâ servorum Dei frequentiâ.” After him Offa promulgated laws throughout his dominions, but these are not now separately extant: and about a century later Alfred the Great, “consultu sapientium,” retained and confirmed all the righteous laws of Ethelbert, Ina, and Offa, while he reformed or rescinded those enactments which circumstances had rendered less efficient or less advisable to be retained. “The laws of Offa,” remarks Sir Francis Palgrave,[13] “have not been retained in their original form, and we cannot distinguish them in the capitulary of the king of Wessex. But the laws of Ina are annexed to the statute of Alfred, and perhaps we only possess them in his edition. There was no incorporate union of the Saxon kingdoms, and it is, therefore, probable that there were two promulgations of Alfred’s laws, one statute for the West-Saxons, and to which the laws of Ina were appended, and another for Mercia, since lost, to which the laws of Offa were, in like manner, annexed.” [Footnote 13: Rise and progress of the English constitution.--_Chap. 2._] It is of course with diffidence that any opinion is set forth which seems to run counter to so eminent an authority as Palgrave; but there does appear a plausible reason (if not a sufficient one) for the laws of Offa not being found under a separate title; viz., that the laws termed those of Alfred, independent of Ina and Ethelbert, _were_ those of Offa! This idea is corroborated by the circumstance, that Alfred did not assume to himself so much credit as a _Lawmaker_ as a collector and improver of laws; for in the preamble to his Code, he says that he had selected some of its laws, with the approbation and advice of his council, from those of _Offa_ and others! The entire improvements which Offa introduced into the legislation of his kingdom and subjected territories are, at the present day, too difficult of discovery to be clearly elucidated, unless the foregoing hypothesis be adopted: but there may be excepted from this difficulty the laws passed at the legatine council in his reign, held at Calchythe, A. D. 785, when Egfrid his son was associated with him in the government.[14]