Already in King Alfred’s laws we have lost the word ‘grith’ as we had already in Cnut’s laws lost the later phrase ‘sac and soc,’ but the tribal principle underlying the meaning of the words remains the same and becomes all the clearer as we go back in the evidence.
In s. 3, the borh-bryce and mund-byrd of the king are stated to be five pounds of ‘mærra pæninga,’[241] an archbishop’s three pounds, and those of the ealdorman and lesser bishops two pounds, exactly as they were reported to have been in Cnut’s time in the ‘grith-law’ of the South Angles.[242]
Its tribal origin.
The almost indiscriminate use of the two terms in this clause suggests again the very slight distinction between them. The man who by giving his pledge placed himself artificially, so to speak, under the mund or protection of a person in a judicial position or authority and broke his pledge became guilty of borh-bryce or mund-byrd, it hardly mattered which. The penalty apparently included both crimes in one. If we might use the Brehon phrase it was the eneclann, or honour price of the person whose dignity was injured, which had to be paid.
But, as we have seen, these penalties were not only personal but also connected with the sanctity of what under Brehon law was called the ‘maigin’ or precinct. The Brehon tract which declares the extent of the ‘inviolable precinct’ of the ‘boaire-chief’ to reach as far as he can throw a spear or hammer from the door of his house, also states that those of higher chieftains extended by multiples of this according to their honour-price, so that the inviolable precinct of the ri-tuath extended to sixty-four spear-casts from his door.[243] We have already quoted a fragment fixing the extent of the king’s ‘grith’ at ‘three miles and three furlongs and three acre breadths and nine feet and nine hand-breadths and nine barleycorns from the burhgeat where the king is.’[244]
The ceorl or gafol-gelda had a flet the peace of which could be broken.
Under King Alfred’s laws, as we have seen, the penalties for breaking into this precinct and committing crimes in it were payable to the person whose ‘peace’ was thus broken, and were not confined to the official classes as the mund-byrd and borh-bryce were. They went back to the tribal root-idea of the sanctity of the hearth and homestead of every tribesman. They extended from the king to the ceorl through all grades. The penalties for fighting within the precinct were practically the same in amount as those for the breaking into it. The penalty for fighting in the ceorlisc-man’s ‘flet’ was practically the same as that for breaking through his ‘edor’ into it.
When all these penalties are put side by side in the form of a table two points become evident.
First, how far removed the social position of the twelve-hyndeman was from that of the ealdorman. The penalty for fighting within his precinct is not much more than a third of that of the bishop and ealdorman, the inference being that his official position was much lower than the ealdorman’s.
Secondly, when we compare the figures in the three columns, while the burh-bryce and fightwite of the twelve-hynde, six-hynde, and twy-hynde classes are both graduated in proportion to their wergelds and very closely resemble one another, it is curious to notice that the fightwite is based upon a duodecimal and the burh-bryce on a decimal system of reckoning, as if they had been derived from different original sources. If King Alfred had originated them he would probably have made them alike.