[3: LL. Ælf. sect. 12. Wilkins, p. 29. It is probable that by wilful murder Alfred means a treacherous murder, committed by one who has no declared feud with another.]
[5: LL. Ælf. sect. 40. See also LL. Ethelb. sect. 34, etc.]
[9: LL. Æthelst. sect. 10, 12. LL.Edg. apud Wilkins, p. 80. LL Ethelredi, sect 4, apud Wilkins, p. 103. Hloth. et Eadm. sect 16. LL. Canute. sect. 22.]
Gangs of robbers much disturbed the peace of the country, and the law determined that a tribe of banditti, consisting of between seven and thirty-five persons, was to be called a “turma,” or troop; any greater company was denominated an army.[*] The punishments for this crime were various, but none of them capital.[**] If any man could track his stolen cattle into another’s ground, the latter was obliged to show the tracks out of it, or pay their value.[***]
Rebellion, to whatever excess it was carried, was not capital but might be redeemed by a sum of money.[****] The legislators, knowing it impossible to prevent all disorders, only imposed a higher fine on breaches of the peace committed in the king’s court, or before an alderman or bishop. An ale-house, too, seems to have been considered as a privileged place; and any quarrels that arose there were more severely punished than else where.[*****]
[* LL. Æthelst. sect. 2. Wilkins, p. 63.]
[* LL. Ethelredi, apud Wilkins, p. 110. LL. Ælf. sect. 4. Wilkins, p35.]
[* LL. Hloth. et Eadm. sect. 12, 13. LL. Ethelr. apud Wilkins, P 117.]
If the manner of punishing crimes among the Anglo-Saxons appear singular, the proofs were not less so; and were also the natural result of the situation of those people. Whatever we may imagine concerning the usual truth and sincerity of men who live in a rude and barbarous state, there is much more falsehood, and even perjury, among them, than among civilized nations: virtue, which is nothing but a more enlarged and more cultivated reason, never flourishes to any degree, nor is founded on steady principles of honor, except where a good education becomes general; and where men are taught the pernicious consequences of vice, treachery, and immorality. Even superstition, though more prevalent among ignorant nations, is but a poor supply for the defects in knowledge and education; our European ancestors, who employed every moment the expedient of swearing on extraordinary crosses and relics, were less honorable in all engagements than their posterity, who from experience have omitted those ineffectual securities. This general proneness to assumed perjury was much increased by the usual want of discernment in judges, who could not discuss an intricate evidence, and were obliged to number, not weigh, the testimony of the witnesses,[*] Hence the ridiculous practice of obliging men to bring compurgators, who, as they did not pretend to know any thing of the fact, expressed upon oath, that they believed the person spoke true; and these compurgators were in some cases multiplied to the number of three hundred.[**] The practice also of single combat was employed by most nations on the continent as a remedy against false evidence;[***] and though it was frequently dropped, from the opposition of the clergy, it was continually revived, from experience of the falsehood attending the testimony of witnesses.[****] It became at last a species of jurisprudence: the cases were determined by law, in which the party might challenge his adversary or the witnesses, or the judge himself;[*****] and though these customs were absurd, they were rather an improvement on the methods of trial which had formerly been practised among those barbarous nations, and which still prevailed among the Anglo-Saxons.