Note 10 — Chapter XII
Reading edition
The "Dialogus de Scaccario" contains the following legendary account of the origin of this custom, which, like so many others, was an Anglo-Saxon usage continued under the Normans:
"Now in the primitive state of the kingdom after the Conquest those who were left of the Anglo-Saxon subjects secretly laid ambushes for the suspected and hated race of the Normans, and here and there, when opportunity offered, killed them secretly in the woods and in remote places: as vengeance for whom—when the Kings and their ministers had for some years with exquisite kinds of tortures, raged against the Anglo-Saxons; and they, nevertheless, had not, in consequence of these measures altogether desisted—the following plan was hit upon: that the so-called "hundred," in which a Norman was found killed in this way—when he who had caused his death was not to be found, and it did not appear from his flight who he was—should be condemned to a large sum of tested silver for the fisc; some indeed to l.36, some to l.44, according to the different localities, and the frequency of the slaying.
"And they say that this is done with the following end in view, namely, that a general penalty of this kind might make it safe for the passers-by, and that each person might hasten to punish so great a crime and to give up to justice him through whom so enormous a loss fell on the whole neighbourhood."—Henderson's "Select Documents," p. 66.