” 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.