Our Legal Heritage | Page 6

mountings. The warriors fought with chariots drawn by two horses. The horse harnesses had bronze fittings. The chariots had wood wheels, later with iron rims. When bronze came into use, there was a demand for its constituent parts: copper and tin, which were traded by rafts on waterways and the sea. Lead was mined. Wrought iroin bars were used as currency.
Corpses were buried far away from any village in wood coffins, except for Kings, who were placed in stone coffins after being wrapped in linen. Possessions were buried with them.
With the ability to grow food and the acquisition of land by conquest, for instance by invading Angles and Saxons, the population grew. There were different classes of men such as eorls, ceorls [free farmers], and slaves. They dressed differently. 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, e.g. Britons, became slaves. 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 master's hands. 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, 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. 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. A lord could kill his slave at will.
The people were worshipping pagan gods when St. Augustine came to England in 596 A.D. to Christianize them. King AEthelbert of Kent 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 what was later called London. Aethelbert and his men who fought with him and ate in his household [gesiths] became Christian.
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, murder, 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 an aetheling was 1500s., of an eorl, 300s., of a ceorl, 100s., of a laet [agricultural serf in Kent], 40-80s., and of a slave nothing. At this time a shilling could buy a cow in Kent or a sheep elsewhere. If a ceorl killed an eorl, he paid three times as much as an eorl would have paid as murderer. The penalty for slander was tearing out of the tongue. If an aetheling were guilty of this offense, his tongue was worth five times that of a coerl, so he had to pay proportionately more to ransom it.
The Law
"THESE ARE THE DOOMS [DECREES] WHICH KING AETHELBERHT ESTABLISHED IN THE DAYS OF AUGUSTINE
1. [Theft of] the property of God and of the church [shall be compensated], twelve-fold; a bishop's property, eleven-fold; a priest's property, nine-fold; a deacon's property, six-fold; a cleric's property, three-fold; church-frith [breach of the peace of the church; right of sanctuary and protection given to those within its precincts], two-fold [that of ordinary breach of the peace]; m....frith [breach of the peace of a meeting place], two-fold.
2. If the King calls his leod to him, and any one there do them evil, [let him compensate with] a two-fold bot [damages for the injury], and 50 shillings to the King.
3. If the King drink at any one's home, and any one there do any lyswe [evil deed], let him make two-fold bot.
4. If a freeman steal from the King, let him repay nine-fold.
5. If a man slay another in the