From the death of Alfred—the last king whose laws have been specially dealt with—till the death of Canute, an interval elapsed of more than 130 years or about four generations, and in almost every reign some fresh Dooms received the sanction of the reigning king and his witan. It will be well for us briefly to survey the course of this legislation and to see what light it throws on the social condition of the country, and what changes it reveals in political institutions. When we consider the laws of this period from a social and economic point of view, one fact stands out at once in strong relief. The immense majority of these laws relate to one crime, theft, and to one form of that crime, the theft of cattle. We have before us a population of herdsmen and sheep-masters whose chief concern it is to guard their live stock from the sly, roving cattle-lifter, and to recover them when thus purloined. Herein these tenth-century laws bear a striking resemblance to the border laws,[213] the code according to which, in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, rough justice was administered between cattle owners and cattle raiders on both sides of the Scottish border.[214] Sometimes, too, the grievances which we hear of in these laws and the rough redress of those grievances which they contemplate, seem to carry us into the same world of which we have read in stories of the Wild West of America only one generation ago. It seems probable that the immense importance thus assigned to the possession and the theft of cattle is partly due to the fact that, owing to the settlement of Danes on the north-east of the Watling Street, a large part of England had now become like Northumberland and Roxburgh, a “border country,” and was subject to all the insecurity of that position.

In order to give greater assistance to the owner of cattle, Edward the Elder ordained that every landowner should have men in readiness on his land to guide those who were seeking to recover their lost property; and these men were straitly warned not for any bribe to divert the owner from his quest, nor give shelter to any convicted thief. Athelstan directed that if any one claimed a beast as his rightful property, he should get one out of five persons nominated by the judge to swear “that it is by folk-right his”; and the defendant must get two out of ten persons similarly nominated, to swear the contrary. But, perhaps, the most interesting of all this class of ordinances is that contained in the Judicia Civitatis Lundoniæ, framed by the chief officers of Church and State, the bishops and reeves (or representatives of the king), not without the consent of all the citizens. We have in these ordinances, under the sanction of Anglo-Saxon royalty, some wonderfully modern devices for the interposition of the community, to lessen the loss inflicted by robbery on the individual.

The document begins: “This is the decision which the bishops and the reeves who belong to London, have made and secured with pledges in our peace-guild, whether of nobles or of commonalty” (eorlisce or ceorlisce), “to supplement the enactments made at various meetings of the witan”. The first chapter ordains that the punishment of death shall be inexorably inflicted on any thief over twelve years of age stealing goods to the value of more than twelve pennies, and that any one endeavouring by force of arms to rescue a thief shall pay a fine of 120 shillings to the king.

The second chapter introduces us to a curious arrangement between the citizens, in the nature partly of a Trade Protection Society and partly of a Society for Mutual Insurance against Theft. “Each one of us shall pay four pennies to a common stock within twelve months, in order to indemnify the owner for any animal which may have been stolen after that time, and we will all join in the quest after the stolen animal. Every one who has a beast worth thirty pennies shall pay his shilling, except poor widows who have no patron or land.” It may be said, Why is the prescribed payment four pennies at the beginning of the law and a shilling at the end? The answer no doubt is that London still adhered to the currency of Mercia, in which only fourpence went to the shilling. The contributors were to be arranged in ten groups of ten each, the oldest of whom was to serve notices and keep the accounts; and these ten seniors with “an eleventh man” whom they were to choose, were to form a sort of governing board, keeping the money and deciding as to contributions into, and payments out of, the common fund. Every man who heard the summons must join in the quest after the stolen animal so long as the trace remained. The quest was to be continued either on the northern or southern march till every member of the guild who had a horse was riding it. He who had no horse of his own must go and work for a lord who should ride in the quest instead of him. Then comes the question at what rate were the stolen beasts to be valued. The ordinary tariff of compensation is as follows:—

For a horse10shillings.
„ an ox30penniesor 7½„
„ a sheep 5„or 1¼„
„ a stolen slave (theow), half a pound=30shillings.

Apparently if the thief was captured and compelled by a court of law to refund a higher price than any of the above, if, for instance, he was made to pay for a valuable ox ten shillings instead of seven shillings and a half, the surplus was divided among the members of the guild, the owner receiving only the sum to which he was entitled under the tariff.

The ordinance continues: “Whosoever takes up that which is the common cause of all of us shall be our friend. We will all be one, in friendship and in enmity. The first man to strike down a thief shall receive twelve pennies from the common purse for having made so good a beginning. The owner of a stolen animal is not to relax his diligence” (because of the insurance), “but must pursue it to the end, and he shall be reimbursed for the expenses of his journey out of the common fund.... We will meet once a month if we have leisure ... with filling of casks and everything else that is suitable, and we must then see which of our decisions have been complied with, and the twelve men shall have their food together, and eat as much as seems good to themselves and dispose of the food that is left [to the poor] according to the will of God.”

The state of society here presented to us is one of peculiar interest. We seem to see these cattle-owning citizens of London, whose flocks and herds were grazing outside the walls of the city in Smithfield or Moorfields. They follow the track of their stolen beasts across the wilds of Middlesex or Surrey (“the Northern and the Southern March”). When the cattle are caught, fierce vengeance is taken on the depredator. If the pursuit fails, the luckless owner can, after all, console himself with the tariff price which he receives from the guild treasury. And then once a month they meet to settle the affairs of their guild, “with filling of casks and everything else that is suitable,” and so a vista is opened, at the end of which after the lapse of centuries, we behold the stately banquets of the Guild-hall of London.

It is possible that to this need of grappling with agrarian crime we owe the institution of the Hundred which was a prominent feature in the organisation of medieval England, after as well as before the Conquest, and exists, though now little more than a survival, even in our own day. It is at least worthy of notice that the first clear mention of the Hundred-court, which is in the reign of Edgar, occurs in close connexion with the theft of cattle, and we might almost be justified in saying that this is the main business which in those beginnings of its existence was thought likely to come before it.

There has been much discussion as to the kind of unit, five-score of which made up the Anglo-Saxon Hundred, but on the whole the prevailing opinion seems to be that it was composed, in theory at least if not invariably in practice, of a hundred hides or households.[215] The charter, if we may so call it, of the Hundred-court is furnished us by a document which is believed to date from the reign of Edgar and which begins: “This is the arrangement, how men shall hold the Hundred. First, that they always gather themselves together once in four weeks: and that each man shall do right to the rest. Second, that they set forth to ride after thieves. If occasion arise, let a man [whose beast has been stolen] give notice to the Hundreds-man, and he then to the Tithing-men, and let them all fare forth as God shall point the way, that they may arrive there [at the place where the beast is hidden]. Let them do justice on the thief as was before ordained by [King] Edmund, and hand over the price to him who owns the animal and divide the rest [of the fine] half to the Hundred and half to the lord.”