§ 1.
It is a debatable question whether any Roman culture lived through the Saxon conquest.
The Saxon conquest of Britain was certainly, on the whole, a destructive one, and it has been justly contrasted with the Frankish conquest of Gaul; where the conquerors quickly assimilated with the conquered. The relics of Roman civilisation which the Saxons adopted, were indeed few. This is true, as a general statement. But there is some ground for regarding Kent as a case apart. Here all accounts seem to indicate a gradual and less violent intrusion of the new race, and to suggest the possibility that there was not for that area a complete break in the traditions and customs of life. The capital city itself, Dorobernia (Canterbury), whatever revolution it may have suffered, was at least not destroyed. There is nothing that requires us to assume the extinction of the schools of grammar which existed presumably in Kent as in Gaul.
The foundation of schools by the Roman mission is not recorded, nor does Bede say anything to imply it when thirty years later he describes the foundation of schools in East Anglia. These were founded by king Sigberct because he desired to have good institutions such as he had seen in Gaul, and his wishes were carried into effect by bishop Felix, after the pattern of the schools of Kent.[57] Whether it would be possible to trace the study of Roman law as a scholastic exercise through these obscure times, is very doubtful.[58] But certainly there is something about the Latinity of our earliest legal documents, that has a local and even a vernacular aspect. Slight as these traces may be, they are interesting enough to merit consideration.
In the Kentish laws are preserved our oldest extant relics of ancestral custom. The first code is that of Æthelberht, with this title:—“This be the Dooms that Æthelbriht, king, ordained in Augustine’s days.” It is much concerned with penalties for personal injuries. These are some of the “Dooms”:—
Cap. 40. If an ear be smitten off, 6 shillings amends (bôt).
” 41. If the ear be pierced through, 3 shillings.
” 43. If an eye is lost, 50 shillings.
” 44. If mouth or eye be damaged, 12 shillings.
” 45. If the nose be pierced, 9 shillings.
” 51. For the four front teeth, 6 shillings each; the tooth that stands next, 4 shillings; the next to that, 3 shillings; and thenceforth, each, 1 shilling.
Penalties for theft are graduated according to the quality of the person injured, i.e., according to the different orders of men in the body politic, each of whom has a separate value: king, noble, freeman, serf, slave. Such we may suppose to have been the primitive institutes of the tribes in the old mother country on the Continent. But the code is headed by a captel, in which the property of the Church is valued beyond that of the king, and the same applies to the higher clergy. “Cap. 1. The property of God and the Church, 12 fold; Bishop’s property, 11 fold; Priest’s, 9 fold [the same as the King’s]; Deacon’s, 6 fold; Clerk’s, 3 fold.” Next follows one that we may well suppose might have been the first of the pre-Christian code: “Cap. 2. If the king summon his people to him, and one there do them evil—double bôt, and 50 shillings to the king.” Bede mentions (ii., 5) these laws of Æthelberht, and especially this feature of them, that they began with the protection of Church property. He also says, that the king constituted these laws according to Roman precedent (juxta exempla Romanorum), by which some have been led to expect that there would be an element of Roman law in them. The imitation consisted only in committing the laws to writing.
Æthelberht died in 616, and then came a heathen reaction under his son Eadbald; but he was converted to Christianity in 618 by Bishop Laurentius. His son Erconbriht, who succeeded in 640, was the first king who dared to demolish the heathen fanes. Bede informs us that this king made a law for the observance of the Lenten fast; but no law of the kind appears until we come to the laws of Wihtred. Ecgbriht succeeded his father in 664, under whom the waning power of Kent reasserted its former sway. To him succeeded first Hlothære in 673, and then Eadric. These two reigns were short, and the names of both the kings stand at the head of the next Kentish code.
The introductory sentence of this code was this:—“Hlothhære and Eadric, kings of the men of Kent, enlarged the laws which their predecessors had made aforetime, with these dooms following”:—
Cap. 8. If one man implead another in a matter, and he cite the man to a ‘Methel’ or a ‘Thing’, let the man always give security to the other, and do him such right, as the Kentish judges prescribe to them.
This code has a little series of laws concerning offences to the sense of honour, and consequent danger to the king’s peace:—
Cap. 11. If in another’s house one man calleth another man a perjurer, or assail him offensively with injurious words; let him pay a shilling to the owner of the house, and 6 shillings to the insulted man, and forfeit 12 shillings to the king.
Cap. 12. If a man remove another’s stoup where men drink without offence, by old right he pays a shilling to him who owns the house, and 6 shillings to him whose stoop was taken away, and 12 shillings to the king.
Cap. 13. If weapon be drawn where men drink, and no harm be done; a shilling to the owner of the house, and 12 shillings to the king.
After a troublous time of encroachment from the side of Wessex, the kingdom of Kent had again a time of honour, if not of absolute independence, under king Wihtred (691-725), who, in the preamble to his laws, is called the most gracious king of the Kentish folk (se mildesta cyning Cantwara). His laws are mostly ecclesiastical. The rights of the Church and of her ministers, the keeping of the Sunday, manumission of slaves at the altar, penalties for heathen rites, these subjects make the bulk of a code of 28 captels, of which the last four are about theft. The closing provision is characteristic of the state of society:
Cap. 28. If a man from a distance, or a stranger, go off the road, and he neither shout nor blow a horn, as a thief he is liable to be examined, or slain, or redeemed.
In the preamble this code is precisely dated on the 6th day of August in Wihtred’s fifth year, which is 696. Also it mentions Berghamstyde, which seems to mean Berkhamstead (Herts), as the place of enactment, and Gybmund, bishop of Rochester, as having been present. Doubts have been cast upon the genuineness of this code, but it is defended in Schmid’s introduction. This is the last of the laws of Kent.
The Kentish laws are found in a register of the twelfth century, which has a high character for fidelity. No doubt the substance of them is faithfully preserved. But they are not in the original Kentish dialect; they have been translated into West Saxon. The translation has not, however, obliterated all traces of the original; there are some peculiarities which survive, and which enable us to see through the present form those traces of a higher antiquity, which strengthen that confidence which the contents are calculated to inspire.
The Kentish dialect was the first literary form of the language of our Saxon ancestors. It has been thought that in the Epinal Gloss, of which a specimen will be given below, we have the best extant representation of this ancient dialect. Early in the ninth century we have some original documents in the Kentish dialect, and these are our surest guides in judging of other specimens.[59]
The following extract is from a legal document of the year 832. Luba had made a deed of gift from her estate to the fraternity of Christ Church at Canterbury, and the following sanction was appended: