The prologue to the laws of Ini establishes the same fact for Wessex; he says,—“Ini, by the grace of God, king of the Westsaxons, with the advice and by the teaching of Cénred, my father, and of Hedde my bishop, and Ercenwold my bishop, with all my ealdormen, and the most eminent witan of my people, and also with a great assemblage of God’s servants[514], have been considering respecting our soul’s heal, and the stability of our realm; so that right law, and right royal judgments might be settled and confirmed among our people; so that none of our ealdormen, nor of those who are subject unto us, should ever hereafter turn aside these our dooms[515].” ----- Footnote 514: The clergy especially. Footnote 515: Thorpe, i. 102. ----- And this is confirmed in more detail by Ælfred. This prince, after giving some extracts from the Levitical legislation, and deducing their authority through the Apostolical teaching, proceeds to engraft upon the latter the peculiar principle of bót or compensation which is the characteristic of Teutonic legislation[516]. He says,—“After this it happened that many nations received the faith of Christ; and then were many synods assembled throughout all the earth, and among the English race also, after they had received the faith of Christ, of holy bishops, and also of their exalted witan. They then ordained, out of that mercy which Christ had taught, that secular lords, _with their leave_, might without sin take for almost every misdeed—for the first offence—the bót in money which they then ordained; except in cases of treason against a lord, to which they dared not to assign any mercy; because Almighty God adjudged none to them that despised him, nor did Christ, the son of God, adjudge any to him that sold him unto death: and he commanded that a lord should be loved like oneself[517]. They then, in many synods, decreed a bót for many human misdeeds; and in many synod-books they wrote, here one doom, there another. ----- Footnote 516: Ælfred makes a marked exception in the case of treason, and repeats it in strong terms in § 4 of his laws, “be hláford syrwe.” These despotic tendencies of a great prince, nurtured probably by his exaggerated love for foreign literature, may account to us for the state of utter destitution in which his people at one time left him. His strong personality, and active character, coupled with the almost miraculous, at any rate most improbable, event, of his ascending the throne of Wessex, may have betrayed him in his youth into steps which his countrymen looked upon as dangerous to their liberties. Nothing can show Ælfred’s antinational and un-Teutonic feeling more than his attributing the system of bóts or compensations to the influence of Christianity. Footnote 517: This is Mr. Thorpe’s version, i. 59. But the words may be as strictly construed, “should be loved like _himself_,” viz. God. -----