SAXON LAWS OR DOOMS
(Thorpe, Ancient Laws and Institutes)
ETHELBERT
(King of Kent, 560-610.) (p. 2)
(5) If a man slay another in the king’s tun[1] let him make bot[2] with fifty shillings.
(9) If a freeman steal from a freeman, let him make threefold bot; and let the king have the wite[3] and all the chattels.
(17) If any one be the first to make an inroad into a man’s tun let him make bot with six shillings; let him who follows with three shillings; after, each, a shilling.
(21) If a man slay another, let him make bot with ... a hundred shillings.
(24) If any one bind a freeman, let him make bot with twenty shillings.
(74) Let maiden-bot be as that of a freeman.
(77) If a man buy a maiden with cattle let the bargain stand, if it be without guile, but if there be guile, let him bring her home again, and let his property be restored to him.
OF THE DOOMS OF INE
(Wessex, 688 A.D.) (Ibid. p. 45)
(20) If a far-coming man or a stranger journey through a wood out of the highway, and neither shout nor blow his horn, he is to be held for a thief, either to be slain or redeemed.
(25) If a chapman traffic up among the people, let him do it before witnesses....
(40) A ceorl’s close ought to be fenced winter and summer. If it be unfenced and his neighbours’ cattle stray in through his own gap, he shall have nothing from the cattle: let him drive it out and bear the damage.
(42) If ceorls have a common meadow, or other partible land to fence, and some have fenced their part, some have not, and (stray cattle) eat up their common corn or grass, let those go who own the gap, and compensate to the others who have fenced their part, the damage which there may be done, and let them demand such justice on the cattle as it may be right. But if there be a beast that breaks hedges and goes in everywhere, and he who owns it will nor or cannot restrain it; let him who finds it in his field take it and slay it, and let the owner take its skin and flesh and forfeit the rest.
(43) When anyone burns a tree in a wood, and it be found out against him who did it, let him pay the full wite; let him give sixty shillings because fire is a thief. If anyone fell in a wood a good many trees, and be afterwards discovered; let him pay for three trees, each with thirty shillings. He need not pay for more of them, were there so many of them as might be; because the axe is an informer, not a thief.
(44) But if anyone cut down a tree under which thirty swine may stand, and it be discovered let him pay sixty shillings.
(49) If a man among his mast find unallowed swine, then let him take a wed[4] of six shillings value.... If pannage[5] be taken for swine, of those three fingers thick in fat, the third; of those two fingers, the fourth; of those a thumb thick, the fifth.
(59) A cow’s horn shall be worth two pence; an ox’s tail shall be worth a shilling; a cow’s shall be five pence; an ox’s eye shall be worth five pence; a cow’s shall be worth a shilling. There shall always be given as barley-rent from one wyrhta (a measure of land) six pounds.
(67) If a man agree for a yard of land,[6] or more, at a fixed rent, and plough it; if the lord desire to raise the land to him to service and to rent, he need not take it upon him, if the lord do not give him a dwelling, and let him lose the crop.
(69) A sheep shall go with its fleece until Midsummer, or let the fleece be paid for with two pence.
ALFRED’S DOOMS
(King of England, 871-901.) (Ibid. p. 20)
[Alfred’s Dooms begin with the Ten Commandments and other regulations taken from the Old Testament.]
(15) He who stealeth a freeman and selleth him, and if it be proved against him so that he cannot clear himself; let him perish by death.
(16) If anyone smite his neighbour with a stone or with his fist, and he nevertheless can go out with a staff, let him get a leech, and work his work while that himself may not.
(19) If anyone thrust out another’s eye, let him give his own for it; tooth for tooth; hand for hand; foot for foot; burning for burning; wound for wound; stripe for stripe.
(22) If anyone dig a water-pit, or open one that is shut up, and close it not again; let him pay for whatever cattle may fall therein; and let him have the dead (beast).
(23) If an ox wound another man’s ox, and if it then die, let them sell the (live) ox, and have the worth in common, and also the flesh of the dead one. But if the lord knew that the ox had used to push, and he would not confine it, let him give him another ox for it, and have all the flesh for himself.
(24) If anyone steal another’s ox, and slay or sell it, let him give two for it; and four sheep for one. If he have not what he may give, be he himself sold for the cattle.
(30) The women who are wont to receive enchanters, and workers of phantasms, and witches, suffer thou not to live:
(32) And let him who sacrificeth to gods, save unto God alone, perish by death.
(36) If a man have only a single garment wherewith to cover himself, or to wear, and he give it (to thee) in pledge; let it be returned before sunset.
(39) All the flesh that wild beasts leave, eat ye not that, but give it to the dogs.
(43) Judge thou very evenly: judge thou not one doom to the rich, another to the poor; nor one to thy friend, another to thy foe, judge thou.
(47) To the stranger and comer from afar behave thou not unkindly, nor oppress thou him with any wrongs.
I then, Alfred, king, gathered these together and commanded many of them to be written which our forefathers held, those which to me seemed good; many of those which seemed to me not good I rejected them, by the counsel of my Witan, and in other wise commanded them to be holden; for I durst not venture to set down in writing much of my own, for it was unknown to me what of it would please those who should come after us.
FURTHER SERIES
(12) If a man burn or hew another’s wood without leave, let him pay for every great tree with five shillings, and afterwards for each, let there be as many of them as may be, with five pence, and thirty shillings as wite.
(34) It is also directed to chapmen, that they bring the men whom they take up with them before the king’s reeve at the folk-moot, and let it be stated how many of them there are ... and when they have need of more men up with them on their journey, let them always declare it, as often as their need may be, to the king’s reeve, in presence of the gemot.
(36) Of heedlessness with a spear.
If a man have a spear over his shoulder, and any man stake himself upon it, that he pay the wer[7] without the wite. If he stake himself before his face, let him pay the wer. If he be accused of wilfulness in the deed, let him clear himself according to the wite; and with that let the wite abate. And let this be if the point be three fingers higher than the hindmost part of the shaft; if they be both on a level, the point and the hindmost part of the shaft, be that without danger.
EDWARD AND GUTHRUM
(Ibid. p. 71)
(7) If anyone engage in Sunday marketing, let him forfeit the chattel, and 12 ores among the Danes, or thirty shillings among the English. If a freeman work on a festival day let him forfeit his freedom or pay wite.
(12) If anyone wrong an ecclesiastic or a foreigner through any means, as to money or as to life, then shall the king or the eorl there in the land, and the bishop of the people be unto him in the place of a kinsman and of a protector, unless he have another.
LAWS OF ATHELSTANE, A.D. 925
(Ibid. p. 83)
Of Landless Men
(8) And we have ordained: if any landless man should become a follower in another shire, and again seek his kinsfolk; that he may harbour him on this condition; that he present him to folkright if he there do any wrong, or make bot for him.
(9) He who attaches cattle, let V of his neighbours be named to him; and of the V let him get one who will swear with him that he takes it to himself by folkright: and he who will keep it to himself, to him let there be named X men, and let him get two of them, and give the oath that it was born on his property....
(10) And let no man exchange any property without the witness of the reeve, or of the mass priest, or of the landlord ... or of any other unlying man....
But if it be found that any of these have given wrongful witness, that his witness never stand again for aught, and that he also give XXX shillings as wite.
(12) And we have ordained that no man buy any property out of port[8] over XX pence; but let him buy there within on the witness of the port reeve, or of another unlying man: or further on the witness of the reeves at the folkmoot.
(13) And we ordain that every burh[9] be repaired XIV days over Rogation Days.
Secondly that every marketing be within port.
(14) Thirdly: that there be one money over all the king’s dominions and that no man mint except within port.
And if the moneyer be guilty, let the hand be struck off with which he wrought the offence, and be set up on the money smithy....
In Canterbury VII moneyers; IV the king’s, and II the bishop’s, I the abbot’s.
At Rochester III; II the king’s, and I the bishop’s.
At London VIII.
At Winchester VI.
At Lewes II.
At Hastings I.
Another at Chichester.
At Hampton II.
At Wareham II.
At Exeter II.
At Shaftesbury II.
Else at the other burgs I.
(15) Fourthly: that no shieldwright cover a shield with sheep’s skin; and if he do so, let him pay XXX shillings.
(16) Fifthly: that every man have to the plough two well-horsed men.
(18) Seventhly: that no man part with a horse over sea, unless he wish to give it.
(24) ... And that no marketing be on Sundays; but if anyone do so, let him forfeit the goods, and pay XXX shillings as wite.
(26) But if any one of my reeves will not do this, and care less about it than we have commanded: then let him pay my oferhyrnes[10], and I will find another who will. And let the bishop exact the oferhyrnes of the reeve in whose following it may be....
All this was established in the great Synod of Greatanlea[11]: in which was the archbishop Wulfhelm, with all the noblemen and witan....
Athelstane, king, makes it known: that I have learned that our frith[12] is worse kept than is pleasing to me, or it at Greatanlea was ordained; and my witan say that I have too long borne with it. Now I have decreed with the witan who were with me at Exeter at mid winter; that they [the Frith breakers], shall all be ready, in themselves and with wives and property and with all things to go whither I will (unless from henceforth they shall desist) on this ... condition, that they never come again to the country ... now that is because the oaths, and the weds, and the books[13] are all disregarded and broken which were there given; and we know of no other things to trust in except it be this.
ETHELRED, A.D. 1008
(Ibid. p. 119)
(13) Let Sunday’s festival be rightly kept, as is thereto becoming: and let marketings and folkmotes be carefully abstained from on that holy day.
CHURCH RULES
(Ibid. p. 472)
We have also seen often in the church, corn, and hay, and all kinds of peculiar things kept;
Mass priest[14] ought always to have at their houses a school of disciples, and if any good man desire to commit his little ones to them for instruction, they ought very gladly to receive them, and kindly teach them.... They ought not, however, for that instruction to desire anything from their relations, except what they shall be willing to do for them of their own accord....
Also we command those mass priests, who are subjected to us, that they very earnestly [busy] themselves about the people’s learning: that those who are learned in books frequently and zealously teach their parishioners from these books, who may not be so far learned in books.
BOUNDARY DISPUTE SETTLED, A.D. 896
(Ibid., p. 139)
“In that year Ethelred, alderman, summoned all the witan of the Mercians together at Gloster, bishops and aldermen and all his chief men, and did that with the knowledge and leave of King Alfred.... Then bishop Werferth made known to the ‘witan’ that almost all the woodland had been reft from him that belonged to Woodchester which king Ethelbald gave to Worcester in perpetual alms, as mastland and woodland, to bishop Wilferth ... and then Aethelwald [the occupier] forthwith declared that he would not oppose the right.... And so very mildly gave it up to the bishop, and ordered his ‘geneat’ named Eclaf, to ride with the townsmen’s priest, named Wulfhere; and he then led him along all the boundaries as he read them to him from the old books how king Ethelbald had before increased and given it. Then, however, Aethelwald desired of the bishop and the convent that they would kindly allow him to enjoy it while he lived, and Allmund his son; and they would hold it in fee of him and the convent; and, he never, nor either of them would bereave him of the pannage right, which he had allowed him in Longridge, for the time in which God gave it to him.... So did the witan of the Mercians declare it in the ‘gemot’; and showed him the charters of the land.... And thus the townsmen’s priest rode it, and Aethelwald’s ‘geneat’ with him.... Thus did Aethelwald’s man point out to him the boundaries as the old charters directed and indicated.”