[9] This and the other prayers cited are translated from the "Formulæ Liturgicæ," published by Gengler and Rozière, and included in Henderson's "Select Documents" (Bell).
[10] The "Dialogus de Scaccario" contains the following legendary account of the origin of this custom, which, like so many others, was an Anglo-Saxon usage continued under the Normans:
"Now in the primitive state of the kingdom after the Conquest those who were left of the Anglo-Saxon subjects secretly laid ambushes for the suspected and hated race of the Normans, and here and there, when opportunity offered, killed them secretly in the woods and in remote places: as vengeance for whom—when the Kings and their ministers had for some years with exquisite kinds of tortures, raged against the Anglo-Saxons; and they, nevertheless, had not, in consequence of these measures altogether desisted—the following plan was hit upon: that the so-called "hundred," in which a Norman was found killed in this way—when he who had caused his death was not to be found, and it did not appear from his flight who he was—should be condemned to a large sum of tested silver for the fisc; some indeed to l.36, some to l.44, according to the different localities, and the frequency of the slaying.
"And they say that this is done with the following end in view, namely, that a general penalty of this kind might make it safe for the passers-by, and that each person might hasten to punish so great a crime and to give up to justice him through whom so enormous a loss fell on the whole neighbourhood."—Henderson's "Select Documents," p. 66.
[11] In Norman times the prosecutor was compensated twofold out of the chattels of the tried and convicted thief; the rest of his goods went to the King.
[12] Except in the matter of succession. See p. 219.
[13] "Common town bargains" were the rule also at Dublin.
[14] This and the whole of the following evidence, with few exceptions, was derived from the appendices to the reports of the Municipal Corporations Commission of 1835; and it is not likely that the state of things thus revealed continues, in all cases, to exist.
[15] "Obviously strips in the common arable field" (Cunningham).
[16] It is difficult to estimate the proportion of bond to free; Seebohm holds that the former comprised the bulk of the population.