Our Legal Heritage, 5th Ed. | Page 6

cuts, indicating death by violence. The Druid priests, the learned
class of the Celts, taught the Celts to believe in reincarnation of the soul
after death of one body into another body. They also threw prized
possessions into lakes and rivers as sacrifices to water gods. They
placed images of gods and goddesses in shrines, which were sometimes
large enough to be temples. They thought of their gods as supernatural
magicians.
With the ability to grow food and the acquisition of land by conquest

by invading groups, the population grew. There were different classes
of men. The freemen were eorls [noble freemen] or ceorls [ordinary
free farmers]. Slaves were not free. Freemen had long hair and beards.
Slaves' hair was shorn from their heads so that they were bald. Slaves
were chained and often traded. Prisoners taken in battle, especially
native Britons taken by invading groups, became slaves. A slave who
was captured or purchased was a "theow". An "esne" was a slave who
worked for hire. A "weallas" was a Welsh slave. Criminals became
slaves of the person wronged or of the king. Sometimes a father pressed
by need sold his children or his wife into bondage. Debtors, who
increased in number during famine, which occurred regularly, became
slaves by giving up the freeman's sword and spear, picking up a slave's
mattock [pick ax for the soils], and placing their head within a lord's or
lady's hands. They were called wite- theows. The original meaning of
the word lord was "loaf-giver". Children with a slave parent were
slaves. The slaves lived in huts around the homes of big landholders,
which were made of logs and consisted on one large room or hall. An
open hearth was in the middle of the earthen floor of the hall, which
was strewn with rushes. There was a hole in the roof to let out the
smoke. Here the landholder and his men would eat meat, bread, salt,
hot spiced ale, and mead while listening to minstrels sing about the
heroic deeds of their ancestors. Richer men drank wine. There were
festivals which lasted several days, in which warriors feasted, drank,
gambled, boasted, and slept where they fell. Physical strength and
endurance in adversity were admired traits.
Slaves often were used as grain grinders, ploughmen, sowers, haywards,
woodwards, shepherds, goatherds, swineherds, oxherds, cowherds,
dairymaids, and barnmen. Slaves had no legal rights. A lord could kill
his slave at will. A wrong done to a slave was regarded as done to his
owner. If a person killed another man's slave, he had to compensate
him with the slave's purchase price. The slave owner had to answer for
the offenses of his slaves against others, as for the mischief done by his
cattle. Since a slave had no property, he could not be fined for crimes,
but was whipped, mutilated, or killed.
During famine, acorns, beans, peas, and even bark were ground down

to supplement flour when grain stocks grew low. People scoured the
hedgerows for herbs, roots, nettles, and wild grasses, which were
usually left for the pigs. Sometimes people were driven to infanticide or
group suicide by jumping together off a cliff or into the water.
Several large kingdoms came to replace the many small ones. The
people were worshipping pagan gods when St. Augustine came to
England in 596 A.D. to Christianize them. King AEthelbert of Kent
[much later a county] and his wife, who had been raised Christian on
the continent, met him when he arrived. The King gave him land where
there were ruins of an old city. Augustine used stones from the ruins to
build a church which was later called Canterbury. He also built the first
St. Paul's church in London. Aethelbert and his men who fought with
him and ate and lived in his household [gesiths] became Christian. A
succession of princesses went out from Kent to marry other Saxon
kings and convert them to Christianity.
Augustine knew how to write, but King AEthelbert did not. The King
announced his laws at meetings of his people and his eorls would
decide the punishments. There was a fine of 120s. for disregarding a
command of the King. He and Augustine decided to write down some
of these laws, which now included the King's new law concerning the
church.
These laws concern personal injury, killing, theft, burglary, marriage,
adultery, and inheritance. The blood feud's private revenge for killing
had been replaced by payment of compensation to the dead man's
kindred. One paid a man's "wergeld" [worth] to his kindred for causing
his wrongful death. The wergeld [wer] of a king was an unpayable
amount of about 7000s., of an aetheling [a king-worthy man of the
extended royal family] was 1500s., of an eorl, 300s., of a ceorl, 100s.,
of a laet