ention at large. Hereof also it came to
pass in the end that they were contented to make a choice and insert no
small numbers of them into their own volumes, as may be gathered by those
of Athelbert the Great, surnamed King of Kent, Inas and Alfred, kings of
the West Saxons, and divers other yet extant to be seen. Such also was the
lateward estimation of them, that when any of the Saxon princes went about
to make new ordinances they caused those of Mulmutius (which Gildas
sometime translated into Latin) to be first expounded unto them; and in
this perusal, if they found any there already framed that might serve
their turn, they forthwith revived the same and annexed them to their own.

But in this dealing the diligence of Alfred is most of all to be
commended, who not only chose out the best, but gathered together all such
whatsoever the said Mulmutius had made: and then, to the end they should
lie no more in corners as forlorn books and unknown to the learned of his
kingdom, he caused them to be turned into the Saxon tongue, wherein they
continued long after his decease.

As for the Normans, who for a season neither regarded the British nor
cared for the Saxon statutes, they also at the first utterly misliked of
them, till at the last, when they had well weighed that one kind of
regiment is not convenient for all peoples (and that no stranger, being in
a foreign country newly brought under obedience, could make such equal
ordinances as he might thereby govern his new commonwealth without some
care and trouble), they fell in with such a desire to see by what rule the
state of the land was governed in the time of the Saxons that, having
perused the same, they not only commended their manner of regiment, but
also admitted a great part of their laws (now current under the name of
"St. Edward's Laws," and used as principles and grounds), whereby they not
only qualified the rigour of their own, and mitigated their almost
intolerable burden of servitude which they had lately laid upon the
shoulders of the English, but also left us a great number of the old
Mulmutian laws, whereof the most part are in use to this day, as I said,
albeit that we know not certainly how to distinguish them from others that
are in strength amongst us.

After Dunwallon, the next lawgiver was Martia, whom Leland surnameth
_Proba_, and after him John Bale also, who in his _Centuries_ doth justly
confess himself to have been holpen by the said Leland,