5. And we all declared on the day that the oaths were sworn that neither slave nor free might go to the army without leave, and their men none the more to us. But if it happen that for need any of them will have traffic with us, or we with them, with cattle and with goods, that is to be allowed on this wise: that hostages be furnished as security for peace and as evidence whereby one may know that the man has a clean back.
ALFRED’S DOOMS.
Source.—Thorpe, Ancient Laws and Institutes of England.
These are the dooms which Alfred the king chose, in order that no man should deem them otherwise than according to his will.
... “That which ye will that other men do not unto you, do ye not that to other men.” On this one doom let a man think that he judge every one righteously: he need heed no other doom-book. Let him remember that he adjudge to no man that which he would not that he should adjudge to him, if he sought judgment against him.
After this, then it happened that many nations received the faith of Christ; then were many synods assembled throughout all the earth, and also among the English race, after they had received the faith of Christ, synods of holy bishops, and also of other distinguished witan. They then ordained, for that mildness of heart which Christ had taught, that secular lords, with their leave, might without sin, take for almost every misdeed, for the first offence, the money-amends which they then ordained; except in cases of treason against a lord, to which they dared not assign any mildness of heart, because God Almighty adjudged none to them who despised him, nor did Christ the Son of God adjudge any to him who sold Him to death; and he commanded that a lord should be loved as one’s self. They then in many synods ordained amends for many human misdeeds: and in many synod-books they wrote, at one place one doom, at another another.
I, then, King Alfred, gathered these laws together and caused them to be written down, selecting many which pleased me from among those ordained by my predecessors. And many of those which I liked not I abrogated by the counsel of my witan, ordaining some different way for the future. For I did not dare to set down in writing many of my own suggestions, not knowing how they would be liked by those who should come after. But whenever I found in the laws passed in the days of my kinsman Ine, or of Offa, King of Mercia, or of Ethelbert, the first English convert to Christianity, anything that seemed to me to be most justly decided, such laws I gathered in and the others I left out.
I, then, Alfred, King of the West Saxons, showed these to all my witan, and they then said that it seemed good to them all to be holden.
12. If a man burn or hew another’s wood without leave, let him pay for every great tree with 5 shillings, and afterwards for each, let there be as many of them as may be, with 5 pence; and 30 shillings as fine.
20. If a man entrust property to another man’s monk, without leave of the monk’s lord, and it be lost from him, let him forfeit it who before owned it.