Note 54 — Chapter II · THE FORMATION OF THE KINGDOM OF ENGLAND. 449–975.
Reading edition
“I then, Ælfred King, these [laws] together gathered, and had many of them written which our foregangers held, those that me-liked. And many of them that me not liked I threw aside, with my Wise Men’s thought, and on otherwise bade to hold them. Forwhy I durst not risk of my own much in writ to set, forwhy it to me unknown was what of them would like those that after us were. But that which I met, either in Ine’s days my kinsman, or in Offa’s the King of the Mercians, or in Æthelberht’s that erst of English kin baptism underwent, those that to me rightest seemed, those have I herein gathered and the others passed by. I then Ælfred, King of the West-Saxons, to all my Wise Men these showed, and they then quoth that to them it seemed good all to hold.” Ælfred’s Dooms, Thorpe’s Laws and Institutes, i. 58–59; Schmid, p. 69