Huntingdon had three monetarii, rendering thirty shillings between the king and comes. In Shrewsbury the king had three monetarii, who, after they had bought the cuneos monetæ, as other monetarii of the country, on the fifteenth day gave to the king twenty shillings each; and this was done when the money was coining. There was a monetarius at Colchester. At Chester there were seven monetarii, who gave to the king and comes seven pounds extra firmam, when money was turned.e e For these, see Domesday-book, under the different places. In April, 1817, a ploughman working in a field near Dorking, in Surrey, struck his plough against a wooden box which was found to contain nearly seven hundred Saxon silver coins, or pennies, of the following kings: But the Annals of the coinage, by the late Rev. R. Ruding, give the best account and plates of the Anglo-Saxon coins, Since this work was published, about the beginning of this year, 1820, a number of old silver coins, nine silver bracelets, and a thick silver twine, were found by a peasant, on digging a woody field in Bolstads Socked, in Sweden. Of the legible coins, eighty-seven were Anglo-Saxon ones. Eighty-three of these bear the date of 1005, and are of king Ethelred's reign; and two of them of his father's, king Edgar. The king of Sweden has purchased them; and they are now deposited in the Royal Cabinet of Antiquities at Stockholm, APPENDIX. No. III. THE HISTORY OF THE LAWS OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS. CHAPTER I. To trace the principles on which the laws of various nations have been formed, has been at all times an interesting object of intellectual exertion; and as the legislation of the more polished periods of states is much governed by its ancient institutions, it will be important to consider the principles on which our AngloSaxon forefathers framed their laws to punish public wrongs, and to redress civil injuries. We shall select for this purpose homicide, personal injuries, theft, and adultery. The principle of pecuniary punishment distinguishes the laws of the Anglo-Saxons, and of all the German nations. Whether it arose from the idea, that the punishment of crime should be attended with satisfaction to the state, or with some benefit to the individual injured, or his family, or his lord; or whether, in their fierce dispositions and warring habits, death was less dreaded as an evil than poverty; or whether the great were the authors of most of the crimes committed, and it was easier to make them responsible in their property than in their lives, we cannot at this distant era decide. But all The Saxons made many distinctions in HOMICIDES. ranks of men were not of equal value in the eye of the Saxon law, nor their lives equally worth protecting. The Saxons had therefore established many nice distinctions in this respect. Our present legislation considers the life of one man as sacred as that of another, and will not admit the degree of the crime of murder to depend on the rank or property of the deceased. Hence a peasant is now as secured from wilful homicide as a nobleman. It was otherwise among the Saxons. The protection which every man received was a curious exhibition of legislative arithmetic. Every man was valued at a certain sum which was called his were; and whoever took his life, was punished by having to pay this were. The were was the compensation allotted to the family or relations of the deceased for the loss of his life. But the Saxons had so far advanced in legislation, as to consider homicide as a public as well as private wrong. Hence, besides the redress appointed to the family of the deceased, another pecuniary fine was imposed on the murderer, which was called the wite. This was the satisfaction to be rendered to the community for the public wrong which had been committed. It was paid to the magistrate presiding over it, and varied according to the dignity of the person in whose jurisdiction the offence was committed; twelve shillings was the payment to an eorl, if the homicide occurred in his town, and fifty were forfeited to the king if the district were under the regal jurisdiction." In the first Saxon laws which were committed to writing, or which have descended to us, and which were established in the beginning of the 7th century, murder appears to have been only punishable by the were and the wite, provided the homicide was not in the servile state. If an esne, a slave, killed a man, even "unsinningly," it was not, as with us, esteemed an excusable homicide; it was punished by the forfeiture of all that he was worth. A person so punished presents us with the original idea of a felon; we consider this word to be a feo-lun, or one divested of all property. In the laws of Ethelbert the were seems to have been uniform. These laws state a meduman leod-gelde, a general penalty for murder, which appears to have been 100 shillings. The dif ferences of the crime arising from the quality of the deceased, or the dignity of the magistrate within whose jurisdiction it occurred, or the circumstances of the action, were marked by differences of the wite rather than of the were. The wite in a king's town was fifty shillings; in an earl's twelve. If the deceased was a freeman, the wite was fifty shillings to the king as the drichtin, the lord or sovereign of the land. So, if the act was done at an open grave, twenty shillings was the wite; if the deceased was a ceorl, six shillings was the wite. If a læc killed the noblest guest, eighty shillings was the wite; if the next in rank, sixty; if the third, forty shillings.d a Wilkins, Leg. Saxon. p. 2, 3. b Wilkins, p. 7. d Ibid. p. 1-7. The wite and the leod gelde were to be paid by the murderer from his own property, and with good money. But if he fled from justice, his relations were made responsible for it. The Saxon law-makers so far extended their care as to punish those who contributed to homicide by introducing weapons among those who were quarrelling. Twenty shillings composed the wite.f The usual time for the payment of the wite and were is not stated; but forty days is mentioned in one case as the appointed period.s As the order and civilization of the Anglo-Saxon society increased, a greater value was given to human life, and the penalties of its deprivation were augmented. The first increase of severity noticed was against the esne, the servile. Their state of subjection rendered them easy instruments of their master's revenge; and it was therefore found proper to make some part of their punishment extend to their owner. Hence, if any man's esne killed a man of the dignity of an eorl, the owner was to deliver up the esne, and make a pecuniary payment adequate to the value of three men. If the murderer escaped, the price of another man was exacted from the lord, and he was required to show by sufficient oaths, that he could not catch him. Three hundred shillings were also imposed as the compensation. If the esne killed a freeman, one hundred shillings were the penalty, the price of one man, and the delivery of the homicide; or if he fled, the value of two men, and purgatory oaths.h A succeeding king exempted the killer of a thief from the payment of his were. This, however, was a mitigation that was capable of great abuse, and therefore Ina required oath that the thief was killed “sinning," or in the act of stealing, or in the act of flying on account of the theft.j Humanity dictated further discrimination. A vagrant in the woods, out of the highway, who did not cry out or sound his horn (probably to give public notice of his situation), might be deemed a thief, and slain; and the homicide, by affirming that he slew him for a thief, escaped all penalties. It was, however, wisely added, that if the fact were concealed, and not made known till long time after, the relations of the slave should be permitted to show that he was guiltless. Mistake or inalice was further guarded against by requiring that where a homicide had killed the thief in the act of flying, yet if he concealed the circumstance he should pay the penalties. The concealing was construed to be presumptive proof of an unjustifiable homicide. m 8 Ibid. Modern law acts on a similar presumption, when it admits the hiding of the body to be an indication of felonious discretion in an infant-murderer, between the age of seven and fourteen. In the days of Ina, the were, or protecting valuation of an individual life, was not uniform. The public were arranged into classes, and each class had an appropriate were. Rank and property seem to have been the criterion of the estimation. The were of some in Ina's time was thirty shillings: of others, 120; of others, 200." The same principle of protection, and of discriminating its pecuniary valuation, was applied to foreigners. The were of a Welshman, who was proprietor of a hide of land, was 120 shillings; if he had but half that quantity, it was 80; and if he had none, it was 60. Hence it appears, that the wealthier a man was, the more precious his life was deemed. This method of regulating the enormity of the crime by the property of the deceased, was highly barbarous. It diminished the safety of the poor, and gave that superior protection to wealth which all ought equally to have shared. The were, or compensatory payment, seems to have been made. to the relations of the defunct. As the exaction of the wite, or fine to the magistrate, kept the crime from appearing merely as a civil injury, this application of the were was highly equitable. But if the deceased was in a servile state, the compensation seems to have become the property of the lord. On the murder of a foreigner, two-thirds of the were went to the king, and onethird only to his son or relations: or, if no relations, the king had one-half, and the gild-scipe, or fraternity to which he was associated, received the other.P The curious and singular social phenomenon of the gild-scipes, we have already alluded to. The members of these gilds were made to a certain degree responsible for one another's good conduct. They were, in fact, so many bail for each other. Thus, in Alfred's laws, if a man who had no paternal relations killed another, one-third of the were of the slain was to be paid by the maternal kinsman, and one-third by the gild; and if there were no maternal kinsmen, the gild paid a moiety. On the other hand, the gild had also the benefit of receiving one-half the were, if such a man of their society were killed." The principle of making a man's society amenable for his legal conduct was carried so far, that by Ina's law, every one who was in the company where a man was killed, was required to justify himself from the act, and all the company were required to pay a fourth part of the were of the deceased. The same principle was established by Alfred in illegal asso n Wilkins, p. 25. • Ibid. P Ibid. p. 18. |