Note 516 — Chapter VI · THE WITENA GEMÓT.

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.