II Aethelstan; or, the Grately Code

About the Author

On the surface, Aethelstan may seem the most obvious candidate to have been the author of the law code. However, it is unlikely that the king actually wrote the law code or even that he composed the laws contained within it. Instead, the king should be understood as a central figure, bestowing authority on the law. As was the norm for Anglo-Saxon law, the actual laws underlying II Aethelstan were produced in a council meeting. The epilogue of the law code specifically names one other individual who was present: Wulfhelm, who served as archbishop of Canterbury from around 926 until his death on February 12, 941. In addition to Wulfhelm, the epilogue also states that there were “all the nobles and councillors whom King Aethelstan could gather together”—a significant and powerful group of advisers termed the witan in Old English. It is highly unlikely that the witan and the archbishop were present only to accept the law. Instead, their council would have contributed to the laws that were promulgated.

It should be noted that the actual law would originally have been the formal, oral declaration made in the council and upheld by oaths. The difference between law and law codes is a central point in understanding Anglo-Saxon legal culture. How much legal force the written version of the law code actually would have had is uncertain, but probably it was only a record of the meeting. Indeed, this record may not originally have been official in nature and was quite probably a personal record. Further emphasizing the distinction between the law and the written law code, the scholar Patrick Wormald goes so far as to question whether Aethelstan was even present at the council in Grately. He argues that the production of the law code may have been undertaken by others at the council, expanding earlier laws issued in the name of Aethelstan in previous council meetings into a fuller and workable document. Although it is not possible to prove, there remains a distinct possibility that Archbishop Wulfhelm himself (or scribes working for him) was originally responsible for the production of this document. Rather than the law code's being used by every administrator of the law, it may have been limited primarily to literate members of the church.