The sixteenth:
Si servus ex sponte suâ eam ederit, aut sex solidis aut flagello.
“If the slave shall eat it of his own motion, let the penalty be either six shillings or a whipping.”
After regulating the mode of declaration of swearing and of compurgation, for the king, the bishop, the abbot, the priest, the deacon, the cleric, the stranger, and the king’s thane, the twenty-first canon enacts—
Paganus cum quatuor compurgatoribus, capite suo ad altare inclinato, semet eximat.
“Let the villain deliver himself with four compurgators, with his head bowed down to the altar.”
The twenty-third:
Si quis Dei mancipium in conventu suo accusaverit, dominus ejus eum simplici suo juramento purgabit, si eucharistiam susceperit. Ad eucharistiam autem si nusquam venerit, habeat in juramento fidejussorem bonum, vel solvat, vel se tradat flagellandum.
“If any person shall accuse a slave of God in his convent, his lord shall purge him with a simple oath, if he shall have received the eucharist. But if he has never come to the eucharist, let him in his oath have a good surety to answer, or let him pay or give himself up to be whipped.”
The slave of God was one belonging to a monastery, of whom there appear to have been a good number in England, at that period, as well as on the continent. The previous canon had legislated for the bishop’s dependants as distinguished from the slave of the monastery.