Scattered in the vast woodlands and marshes lie small farms, enclosed by ditches and posts and rails, from which if you steal a rail, you are fined 1s., if you steal a post, 3s. There were stake fences, which you must be careful in making, for if a horse stakes himself by leaping in, you pay nothing; but if he does so by leaping out, you pay the price of the horse. Moreover, you must leave no sharp stakes standing out of the hedge; for if a man or beast wounds himself thereby in passing, you have to pay full weregeld.
Walking over sown land, or sending a woman of your mundium to do so, in accordance with an ancient superstition, is a severe offence; so is injuring a vineyard, or taking more than tres uvæ (bunches of grapes, I presume) from the vine. Injuring landmarks cut on the trees (theclaturas and signaturas) or any other boundary mark, is severely punishable either in a slave, or in a freeman.
In the vast woods range herds of swine, and in the pastures, horses, cared for by law; for to take a herd of swine or brood mares as pledge, without the king’s leave, is punishable by death, or a fine of 900s. Oxen or horses used to the yoke can be taken as pledge; but only by leave of the king, or of the schuldhais (local magistrate), on proof that the debtor has no other property; for by them he gets his living. If, however, you find pigs routing in your enclosure, you may kill one, under certain restrictions, but not the ‘sornpair,’ sounder boar, who ‘battit et vincit’ all the other boars in the sounder (old English for herd).
Rival swineherds, as is to be supposed, ‘battidunt inter se,’ and ‘scandalum faciunt,’ often enough. Whereon the law advises them to fight it out, and then settle the damage between them.
Horses are cared for. To ride another man’s horse costs 2s.; to dock or crop him, eight-fold the damage; and so on of hurting another man’s horse. Moreover, if your neighbour’s dog flies at you, you may hit him with a stick or little sword, and kill him, but if you throw a stone after him and kill him, you being then out of danger, you must give the master a new dog.
Then there are quaint laws about hunting; and damage caused by wild beasts caught in snares or brought to bay. A wounded stag belongs to the man who has wounded it for twenty-four hours: but after that to anyone. Tame deer, it is observable, are kept; and to kill a doe or fawn costs 6s., to kill a buck, 12s. Tame hawks, cranes, and swans, if taken in snares, cost 6s. But any man may take flying hawks out of his neighbour’s wood, but not out of the Gaias Regis, the king’s gehage, haies, hedges, or enclosed parks.
And now, I have but one more law to mention—would God that it had been in force in later centuries—
‘Let no one presume to kill another man’s aldia or ancilla, as a striga, witch, which is called masca; because it is not to be believed by Christian minds, that a woman can eat up a live man from within; and if any one does so he shall pay 60s. as her price, and for his fault, half to her master, and half to the king.’
This last strange law forces on us a serious question, one which may have been suggesting itself to you throughout my lecture. If these were the old Teutonic laws, this the old Teutonic liberty, the respect for man as man, for woman as woman, whence came the opposite element? How is it that these liberties have been lost throughout almost all Europe? How is it that a system of law prevailed over the whole continent, up to the French revolution, and prevails still in too many countries, the very opposite of all this?
I am afraid that I must answer, Mainly through the influence of the Roman clergy during the middle age.