Ib. c. 24. Aleam, quod mirere, sobrii inter seria exercent, tanta lucrandi perdendive temeritate ut, cum omnia defecerunt, extremo ac novissimo jactu de libertate et de corpore contendant. Victus voluntariam servitutem adit: quamvis juvenior, quamvis robustior, adligari se ac venire patitur. Ea est in re prava pervicacia, ipsi fidem vocant. Servos conditionis hujus per commercia tradunt, ut se quoque pudore victoriae exsolvant.

Ib. c. 25. Ceteris servis non in nostrum morem, descriptis per familiam ministeriis, utuntur. Suam quisque sedem, suos penates regit. Frumenti modum dominus aut pecoris aut vestis, ut colono, injungit, et servus hactenus paret. Cetera domus officia uxor ac liberi exsequuntur. Verberare servum ac vinculis et opere coercere rarum. Occidere solent, non disciplina et severitate, sed impetu et ira, ut inimicum, nisi quod impune. Liberti non multum supra servos sunt, raro aliquod momentum in domo, nunquam in civitate, exceptis duntaxat iis gentibus quae regnantur. Ibi enim et super ingenuos et super nobiles ascendunt; apud ceteros impares libertini libertatis argumentum sunt.

Ib. c. 26. Fenus agitare, et in usuras extendere ignotum; ideoque magis servatur quam si vetitum esset. Agri pro numero cultorum ab universis vicis [al. in vices] occupantur, quos mox inter se secundum dignationem [al. dignitatem] partiuntur. Facilitatem partiendi camporum spatia praestant. Arva per annos mutant, et superest ager. Nec enim cum ubertate et amplitudine soli labore contendunt ut pomaria conserant, et prata separent, et hortos rigent; sola terrae seges imperatur. . . .

Ib. c. 39. Vetustissimos se nobilissimosque Suevorum Semnones memorant. Fides antiquitatis religione firmatur. Stato tempore in silvam auguriis patrum et prisca formidine sacram omnes ejusdem sanguinis populi legationibus coeunt, caesoque publice homine celebrant barbari ritus horrenda primordia.

...

BAED. Hist. Eccl. v. 1o. Non enim habent regem iidem antiqui Saxones, sed satrapas plurimos suae genti praepositos, qui ingruente belli articulo mittunt aequaliter sortes, et quemcunque sors ostenderit, hunc tempore belli ducem omnes sequuntur, huic obtemperant; peracto autem bello rursum aequalis potentiae omnes fiunt satrapae.

EXTRACTS FROM THE EARLY LAWS OF THE ENGLISH.

The laws of all nations which have developed steadily and in their own seats, with little or no intermixture of foreign elements, are generally perpetuated by custom and oral tradition. Hence the earliest written laws contain amendments of older unwritten customs, or codifications of those customs when they are gradually wearing out of popular recollection. Such documents are then generally obscure, requiring for their elucidation. a knowledge of the customs they were intended to amend, which is not easily attainable; and where they are clear, they will be found frequently to contain little more than assessments of fines for offences and injuries, with very scanty indications of the process by which the laws are made or the fines exacted. Nor is the case much better where codification is attempted; for the diversity of customs being very great, and the code not intended to supersede but to perpetuate them, the lawgiver is apt to become didactic, and to enunciate principles drawn from religion or morality, rather than legal definitions. The following extracts from the Anglo-Saxon Laws and Institutes may seem a very small residuum, after the winnowing of a very bulký 'Corpus Juris.' But they will be found to contain nearly every mention that occurs in the Collection of our Laws of such matters as public assemblies, courts of law, taxation, or the legal machinery on the carrying out of which the discipline of self-government is based. The great bulk of the laws concern chiefly such questions as the practice of compurgation, ordeal, wergild, sanctity of holy places, persons, or things; the immunity of estates belonging to churches; and the tables of penalties for crimes, in their several aspects as offences against the peace, the family, and the individual. These, as touching Constitutional History in a very indirect way, are here excluded.

Of the existing Anglo-Saxon laws, those of Ethelbert, Hlothere and Eadric, Wihtred, Ine, Edward the Elder, Athelstan, Edmund, and Edgar, are mainly of the nature of amendments of custom. Those of Alfred, Ethelred, Canute, and those de

scribed as Edward the Confessor's, aspire to the character of codes; but English law, from its first to its latest phase, has never possessed an authoritative, constructive, systematic, or approximately exhaustive statement, such as was attempted by the great compilers of the civil and canon laws, by Alfonso the Wise or Napoleon Buonaparte. The translation of the following extracts is that of Mr. Benjamin Thorpe, in the Ancient Laws and Institutes of the Anglo-Saxons.

A.D. 600. Kent. ETHELBERT; cap. 2. If the king call his 'leod' to him and any one there do them evil, let him compensate with a twofold 'bot' and fifty shillings to the king.

A.D. cir. 680. Kent. HLOTHAERE AND EADRIC; cap. 8. If one man make plaint against another in a suit, and he cite the man to a 'methel' or to a 'thing,' let the man always give 'borh' to the other, and do him such right as the Kentish judges prescribe to them.

A. D. cir. 700. Kent. WIHTRED; Council of Baccanceld. Illius personae, (sc. regis) et principes, praefectos seu duces ('eorlas and ealdormen, scirerevan and domesmenn,' A.-S. Chron.) statuere.

A.D. cir. 690. Wessex. INI; Preamble to Laws. I, Ini, by God's grace king of the West Saxons, with the counsel and with the teaching of Cenred my father, and of Hedde my bishop, and of Eorcenwold my bishop, with all my ealdormen and the most distinguished 'witan' of my people, and also with a large assembly of God's servants, have been considering of the health of our souls and of the stability of our realm; so that just law and just kingly dooms might be settled and established throughout our folk, so that none of the ealdormen nor of our subjects should hereafter pervert these our dooms.

Cap. 8. If any one demand justice before a 'scirman' or other judge and cannot obtain it, and a man (the defendant) will not give him 'wedd,' let him make 'bot' with xxx. shillings, and within vii. days do him justice.

Cap. II. If any one sell his own countryman, bond or free, though he be guilty, over sea, let him pay for him according to his wer.'

Cap. 36. Let him who takes a thief, or to whom one taken is given, and he then lets him go, or conceals the theft, pay for the thief according to his 'wer.' If he be an ealdorman, let him

forfeit his shire, unless the king is willing to be merciful to him.

Cap. 39. If any one go from his lord without leave, or steal himself away into another shire, and he be discovered, let him go where he was before, and pay to his lord lx. shillings.

Cap. 45. Bot' shall be made for the king's 'burg-bryce' and a bishop's, where his jurisdiction is, with cxx. shillings; for an ealdorman's, with lxxx. shillings; for a king's thegn's, with lx. shillings; for a 'gesithcund' man's, having land, with xxxv. shillings, and according to this make the legal denial.

Cap. 51. If a 'gesithcund' man owning land neglect the 'fyrd,' let him pay cxx. shillings and forfeit his land; one not owning land, lx. shillings; a ceorlish man, xxx, shillings, as 'fyrdwite.'

A.D. cir. 760. PONTIFICALE EGBERTI ARCH. EBOR. Benedictio super regem noviter electum.-Primum mandatum regis ad populum hic videre potes. Rectitudo regis est noviter ordinati et in solium sublimati, haec tria praecepta populo Christiano sibi subdito praecipere; in primis ut ecclesia Dei et omnis populus Christianus veram pacem servent in omni tempore. Amen.

Aliud est, ut rapacitates et omnes iniquitates omnibus gradibus interdicat. Amen.

Tertium est ut in omnibus judiciis aequitatem et misericordiam praecipiat, ut per hoc nobis indulgeat misericordiam Suam. clemens et misericors Deus. Amen.

A.D. 787. CONC. LEGATIN.; cap. XII. Duodecimo sermone sanximus, ut in ordinatione regum nullus permittat pravorum praevalere assensum, sed legitime reges a sacerdotibus et senioribus populi eligantur, et non de adulterio vel incestu procreati.

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A.D. cir. 890. Wessex. ALFRED; Preamble. . . . They then ordained. . . . that secular lords, with their (the bishops and witan) leave might without sin take for almost every misdeed, for the first offence the money 'bot' which they then ordained; except in cases of treason against a lord; to which they dared not assign any mercy. . . . I, then, Alfred, king, gathered these (laws) together, and commanded many of those to be written which our forefathers held, those which to me seemed good; and many of those which seemed to me not good I rejected them, by the counsel of my 'witan.'. . . . I, then, Alfred, king of the West Saxons, shewed these to all my 'witan,' and they then said that it seemed good to them all to be holden.

Cap. 4. If any one plot against the king's life, of himself, or

by harbouring of exiles, or of his men ; let him be liable in his life and in all that he has.... He who plots against his lord's life, let him be liable in his life to him, and in all that he has...

Cap. 22. If any one at the folkmote make declaration of a debt, and afterwards wish to withdraw it, let him charge it on a righter person, if he can; if he cannot, let him forfeit his 'angylde,' and [let the reeve] take possession of the 'wite.'

Cap. 27. If a man, kinless of paternal relatives, fight and slay a man, and then if he have maternal relatives, let them pay a third of the 'wer;' his guild-brethren a third part; for a third let him flee. If he have no maternal relatives, let his guildbrethren pay half, for half let him flee.

Cap. 28. If a man kill a man thus circumstanced, if he have no relatives, let half be paid to the king, half to his guildbrethren.

Cap. 38. If a man fight before a king's ealdorman in the 'gemot,' let him make 'bot' with 'wer' and 'wite,' as it may be right; and before this, cxx. shillings to the ealdorman as 'wite.' If he disturb the folkmote by drawing his weapon, cxx. shillings to the ealdorman as wite.' If aught of this happen before a king's ealdorman's junior, or a king's priest, xxx. shillings as 'wite.'

Cap. 41. The man who has boc-land,' and which his kindred left him, then ordain we that he must not give it from his 'maeg-burg,' if there be writing or witness that it was forbidden by those men who at first acquired it, and by those who gave it to him, that he should do so; and then let that be declared in the presence of the king and of the bishop before his

kinsmen.

A.D. 879. ALFRED AND GUTHRUM'S PEACE. This is the peace that King Alfred and King Guthrum, and the 'witan' of all the English nation, and all the people that are in East Anglia, have all ordained and with oaths confirmed, for themselves and for their descendants, as well for born as for unborn, who reck of God's mercy or of ours.

1. Concerning our land boundaries; Up on the Thames, and then up on the Lea, and along the Lea unto its source, then right to Bedford, then up on the Ouse unto Watling Street.

2. Then is this: If a man be slain, we estimate all equally dear, English and Danish, at viii. half marks of pure gold; except the 'ceorl' who resides on 'gafol' land and their 'liesings ;' they also are equally dear, either at cc. shillings.

3. And if a king's thegn be accused of man-slaying, if he dare to clear himself, let him do that with xii. king's thegns. If any