In the administration of the City, the Bishop and the Portreeve were the two principal officers; the former represented more than the ecclesiastical life, because the Church governed the life of every man at every step in his pilgrimage from the cradle to the grave. The Portreeve was the king’s officer: he looked after customs, dues, tolls, etc. The port is neither “Porta,” the gate; nor “Portus,” the harbour; it is “Portus,” the enclosed space: “Portus est conclusus locus quo importantur merces et inde exportantur” (Thorpe, 1. 158). The Portreeve was the civil magistrate, as the Bishop was the ecclesiastical. Other officers were the “Tungerefa,” or Tunreeve, whose business it was to inquire into the payment of custom dues. The “Caccepol” (Catchpole), or Beadle, was perhaps a collector. And there were the Jurats or Jurors, called sometimes testes credibiles, who acted as witnesses in every case of bargain or sale. The laws of Edgar said: “Let every one of them on his first election as a witness take an oath that neither for profit, nor for fear, nor for favour, will he ever deny that which he did witness, nor affirm aught but what he did see and hear. And let there be two or three such sworn men as witnesses to every bargain.” The “Wic-reeve” is also mentioned, but this is probably only another name for Town-reeve. He is mentioned in an edict issued by two Kentish kings, Hlothhere and Edric (673-685). “If any Kentish man buy a chattel in Lundewic, let him have two or three witnesses or a king’s wic-reeve.” Wright takes this officer to have been one appointed by the Kings of Kent to look after their interests in a town belonging to the Kings of Essex. Why should it not mean simply the reeve of the port, i.e. the reeve of the Kings of Essex? “If it be afterwards claimed of the man in Kent, let him then vouch the man who sold it him, or the wic at the king’s hall.” Criminals were tried in open court by their fellows. They might be acquitted by the oaths of those who had known them long. If they were found guilty, the punishments were cruel: they were deprived of hands, feet, tongue, eyes; women were hurled from cliffs into the river, or burned; floggings were inflicted. Ordeals were practised—that of the “corsned,” or consecrated barley-bread, which only the innocent could swallow;—this ordeal was supposed to have killed Earl Godwin; that of cold water, that of hot water, that of hot iron. Not, however, the ordeal by battle. Of all other ordeals the event was uncertain: in that by battle one or the other had to die. The citizen of the tenth century had the greatest possible objection to such an ordeal. Later on, under Norman rule, he protested continually against this liability, until the King conceded his freedom from it.
ANGLO-SAXON MODES OF PUNISHMENT
Claud MS., B. iv.
THE FLOGGING OF A SLAVE
Harl. MS., 603.
The Anglo-Saxon laws are simply amazing as regards the punishments ordered for those offenders who were of servile rank. Their savage cruelty shows that the masters were afraid of the slaves. If a slave woman stole anything she might be whipped unmercifully, thrown into prison, and kept there; thrown over a precipice, drowned, or even burned to death. In the last case she was to be burned by eighty other women slaves, every one of whom was to contribute a log towards the fire. If a man slave committed a similar offence he might be stoned to death by eighty other slaves, and if one of those eighty missed his mark three times he was to be flogged. Since, however, slaves cost money, and were valuable property, it is not probable that they were often destroyed for slight offences. On the other hand, they were cruelly flogged. A small drawing in a contemporary MS. shows the flogging of a slave. He is stripped naked; his left foot is confined by a circle; two men are flogging him with thorny handles. The cruelty of the punishment, thus brought home to one, seems atrocious. But flogging was not the worst or the most cruel punishment. Every kind of mutilation was practised in ways almost unspeakable. Mutilation, indeed, was continued as a punishment long after the Conquest. We shall see, for instance how Henry I. punished the “moneyers” who had debased the coin by striking off their right hands and depriving them of their manhood. Eyelids were cut off, noses, lips, ears, hands, feet; the victims of this barbarity were to be seen on every road in every town. Those who were not slaves, but freemen, were, as a rule, treated with far more clemency. First, for the man not taken red-handed, there was the ordeal to which he might appeal. There was next the “compurgation,” in which the accused had to find a sufficient number of reputable persons to swear that he was not capable of the offence charged. Or again, many offences could be cleared by penance, and since penance included fasting, which is impossible for the weak and the old, the repetition of prayers and singing of Psalms was allowed as a substitute; and since these do no good except to the penitent, compulsory almsgiving was further allowed as a substitute. So that, although the Church attempted to make of the last mode of punishment a real and substantial fine in proportion to the means of the sinner, the natural, certain, and inevitable result followed: that all crimes could be atoned for by those who could pay the fines, and that in the Christian Church there was one law for the rich and another for the poor. Also, as naturally followed in course of time, it became customary to classify most crimes by a kind of tariff. Those of violence, greed, and lust, which were common in an age of violence, were priced at so much apiece. Those, however, of murder of kin, arson, treason, witchcraft, were held “bootless,” i.e. not to be atoned for by any fine. Then a very curious institution existed, called the Frank pledge. Every man in the country belonged to a tithing or company of ten; every company of ten belonged to a company of a hundred; every crime had to be paid for by the tithing, or the hundred; thus it happened in this way it was made the interest of every one that the tithing or the hundred should be kept free from crime.
The punishment of women by drowning was practised in very early times by the ancient Germans and Anglo-Saxons. It was continued down to the middle of the fifteenth century, when it was finally, but not formally, abolished. But women were drowned on the Continent in the eighteenth century. The London places of execution were the Thames, and the pools of St. Giles, Smithfield, St. Thomas Watering, and Tyburn. Sometimes the criminal was sewn up in a sack with a snake, a dog, an ape—if one could be procured—and a cock.
The right of taking a part in the government of his country was always held and claimed by the Anglo-Saxon freeman. Thus in London, all causes were tried, and all regulations for the ordering of the City were made, by the citizens themselves in open court. The Hustings, a Danish Court, was held once a week, on Monday. The Folkmote was held on occasion, and not at stated times. The men were called together by the bell of St. Paul’s, to Paul’s Cross; there, in a tumultuous assemblage, everything was discussed, not without blows and even slaying or wounding, for every man carried his knife. It was difficult to persuade the citizens to meet without arms, because to carry no arms was the outward mark of the slave; even the clergy carried arms. Only while performing penance the freeman must lay aside his sword; and that, no doubt, was a greater penalty than the fast. Another distinguishing mark of the freeman was his long hair: the slaves had their hair cut close; the most shameful punishment that could be inflicted on a free woman was to cut off her hair.
Wright is of opinion that the existence of London was continuous, and that it was never taken or sacked by the Saxons. We have seen the evidence for the desertion of the City. He adduces the example of Exeter, where English and Welsh continued to live on equal terms; he acknowledges that this could only have been done by virtue of an original composition with the English conquerors.
