Book 1 — CHAPTER IX. THE MUTUAL GUARANTEE. MÆGBURH. TITHING. HUNDRED.

The organization in Marks and in the Gá or Scír was a territorial one, based upon the natural conformation of the country, common possession of the soil and usufruct of its produce. It has been already said that both of these divisions had their separate courts of justice or parliaments, their judges and executive officers. But some further machinery was required to secure the public peace, to provide for the exercise of what, in modern society, we call the police, and to ensure the rights of the individual markman, in respect to other markmen, as well as his conformity to the general law. A corporate existence was necessary, which should embrace a more detailed system of relations than was to be found either in the Mark or in the Shiremoot. Strictly speaking, the former of these was principally busied with the questions which arose out of its own peculiar nature, that is, with offences against the integrity of the frontier, the forest, the rights of common in the pastures and meadows, and other delinquencies of a public character. On the other hand, the Shiremoot, though it must have taken cognizance of disputed questions between several Marks, and may, even from the first, have 229exercised some description of appellate jurisdiction, must naturally have considered the higher and more general attributes of legislation and foreign policy, the national rather than municipal administration, as belonging to its peculiar and appropriate province. Perhaps also the exigencies of military discipline may gradually have rendered a more complicated method of enrolment necessary, by means of which companies and regiments might be kept upon a permanent footing, and called into immediate action when occasion demanded their services; while, at the same time, due provision was made for the tilling the lands of those whose personal exertions were required in defence of the public weal^[433].

There were two forms in which these various objects might be attained; these were, subordinate organizations of men, not excessive in number, or too widely dispersed, and founded either upon the bond of blood or the ties of family, including that of adoption, or merely upon an arbitrary numerical definition. Each of these plans had advantages as well as defects: the family bond alone did not secure a sufficient territorial unity, although in practice it had at first considerable influence upon the location of individual households; moreover it gave rise to an inequality continually on the increase, and necessarily threatening to the independence of the free men. On the other hand, any merely arbitrary, numerical classification would have excluded 230a most important social element, the responsibility of man to man in the bond of kindred, the feelings and engagements of family affection, family honour and family ambition. The problem was finally solved by a partial union of the two methods: in all probability, the law of compromise which reigns throughout all history, gradually brought about a fusion of two separate principles, widely differing in point of antiquity, and thus superinduced the artificial upon the natural bond, without entirely destroying the influence of the latter.

For I think it unquestionable that the artificial bond was really later in point of time: since, in the first place, indefinite and vague arrangements usually precede the definite and settled; and next, because Tacitus takes no notice whatever of any but the family bond, which he represents as stringent in the highest degree. We have already seen that Caesar declares the divisions of the land to have taken place according to families or relationships, cognationes^[434], from which we may infer at first a considerable amount of territorial unity. From his far more observant successor we learn that the military organization was based upon the same principle; that the composition of the troop or regiment depended upon no accidental arrangement, but was founded upon families or relationships^[435]; and that every man was bound to take up 231the enmities as well as the friendships of his father or kinsman^[436]. But leaving these earlier evidences, it still seems that the Mǽgburh or Family-bond is an institution whose full comprehension is necessary to a clear conception of the Anglosaxon public and private life.

The idea of the family is at once the earliest and strongest of human ties; in its development it is also the most ennobling to the individual and salutary to the state; on it depend the honour and dignity of woman, the unselfish education of man, the training of children to obedience and love, of parents to protection and justice, of all to love of country and enlightened subordination to the state. Where it does not exist, man becomes an instrument in the hands of others, or the blind tool of systems. In its highest form it is the representative of that great mystery by which all Christians are one brotherhood, united under one Father and King. Throughout the latter day of ethnic civilization, when the idea of state had almost ceased to have power, and the idea of family did not exist, there was a complete destruction both of public and private morality; and the world, grown to be a sink of filth and vice, was tottering to the fall which Providence in mercy had decreed for its purification. The irruption of the German tribes breathed into the dead bones of heathen cultivation the breath of a new life; and the individual dignity of man as a member of a family,—the deep-seated 232feeling of all those nations,—while it prepared them to become the founders of Christian states which should endure, made them the wonder of the philosophers and theologians of Rome, Greece and Africa, and an example to be held up to the degenerate races whom they had subdued^[437]. The German house was a holy thing; the bond of marriage a sacred and symbolic engagement^[438]; holy above man was woman herself. Even in the depths of their forests the stern warriors had assigned to her a station which nothing but that deep feeling could have rendered possible: this was the sacred sex, believed to be in nearer communion with divinity than men^[439]. In the superstitious tradition of their mythology, it was the young and beautiful Shieldmays, the maiden Wælcyrian, who selected the champions that had deserved to become the guests of Wóden. The matrons presided over the rites of religion, conducted divinations^[440], and encouraged the warriors on the field of battle^[441]; Veledas 233and Aurinias, prophetesses in the bloom of youth and beauty, led the raw levies of the North to triumph over the veteran legions of Rome. Neither rank nor wealth could atone for violated chastity^[442]; nor were in general any injuries more severely punished than those which the main strength of man enabled him to inflict on woman^[443]. That woman, nevertheless, in the family, held a subordinate situation to men, lies in the nature of the family itself, and in the disposition and qualities which have been implanted in woman, to enable her to fulfil her appointed duties in the scheme of Providence; qualities not different in degree, but kind, from those of her helpmate, that they may be the complement of his, and, united with his, make up the full and perfect circle of humanity. As an individual, woman was considered a being of a higher nature; as a member of the state, she was necessarily represented by him upon whom nature had imposed the joyful burthen of her support, and the happy duty of her protection,—a principle too little considered by those who, with a scarcely pardonable sciolism, have clamoured for what they call the rights of woman. Woman among the Teutons was near akin to divinity, but not one among them ever raved that the femme libre could be woman.

Hence the profound importance attached to chastity, 234and the undoubted influence of alliances by marriage^[444], through which separate kindreds are fused into one body, adopting common interests, pursuing common objects, and recognizing in the bond which unites its members, obligations which are still exhibited in oriental countries, which we trace throughout the middle ages of Europe, but which are gradually vanishing under the conditions of our modern mercantile society.

It lies in the very nature of things that among a people animated with such principles as have now been described, and so placed by circumstances on tracts of land far more than sufficient for their support, the very earliest organization should be based upon the family relations. Dwelling near to one another, united by a community of interests and the endearing ties of mutual relationship, or the scarcely weaker bond of adoption,—strong as regards other families in direct proportion to their union among themselves,—the mǽgð or family offer all the guarantees in their own natural position which the primitive state can require. In the popular councils the largest and most distinguished family has necessarily the greatest weight; but association of others, severally less powerful, is always capable of counteracting danger which might arise in a free state from the ambition of any of its portions. In the absence of a central power,—or rather its dispersion through all the several members of the community, 235the collection of revenue and the maintenance of the peace must be left to the heads of the several fractions, whether villages (as in the East), or families, which at one time are identical with villages. The police therefore especially belongs to the family, and is by it exercised over all the individuals that compose it; hence also the grave misconduct of the individual may justly have the effect of destroying the social position of the whole mǽgð. In Beówulf, the warriors who deserted their prince in his utmost need, are sternly told by his successor, that not only they, but their whole mǽgburh will thenceforth have forfeited the rights of citizenship,

folcrihtes sceal

ðǽre mǽrge

monna ǽghwylc

ídel hweorfan,

not, each of you individually, but each and every man of your kin, cognation or mǽgsceaft, shall be deprived of his rights of citizenship: from which we must infer that the misconduct of one person might compromise his relatives, who are held responsible for his actions^[445]. And this rule, coupled with the fact of all serving together, under one selected from among themselves, and each under the eye of his nearest and dearest friends, supplied a military organization capable of enabling the barbarians to cope with far more disciplined and scientific military systems than their own; serving to explain 236the almost irresistible power with which, like the Turks of more recent times, the Teutons of old burst upon the nations exposed to their onset^[446]. The wergyld, or price of blood, the earliest institution of this race, only becomes perfectly intelligible when considered from this point of view: the gens or family at large are injured by the loss of their associate, and to them compensation must be made; so they, in turn, must make compensation for him, since rights and duties are commensurate. This principle, however darkly, is still involved in the theory of our civil actions for seduction.

237It lies in the very nature of things that this, albeit a natural, cannot be an enduring system. Its principal condition is neighbourhood, the concentration of the family upon one spot: as population increases, and with it emigration, the family bond gradually becomes weaker, and at last perishes as a positive and substantive institution, surviving only fragmentarily in the traces which it leaves upon the latter order that replaces it. War, commerce, cultivation,—the effect and cause of increasing population,—gradually disperse the members of the sibsceaft or cognation, and a time arrives when neighbours are no longer kinsmen. At this point the old organization ceases to be effective, and a new one becomes necessary, unless the ancient principle is to be entirely abandoned. But principles are not easily abandoned in early stages of society; a young nation finds it easier to adopt artificial arrangements founded upon the ancient form: nor is it necessary that the later should have totally superseded its predecessor; it is enough that when the earlier ceases to fulfil its object, the latter should be directed to supply its obvious deficiency, and be united with it, as circumstances best permit.

Throughout the earliest legislation of the Teutonic nations, and especially in our own, we find arrangements, based upon two distinct principles, in active operation. The responsibility of the family lies ever in the background, the ultimate resort of the state against the individual, of the individual against the state. But we also find small 238bodies of men existing as corporations, founded upon number and neighbourhood, and thus making up the public units in the state itself. From the first, we find the inhabitants of the Mark classed in tens and hundreds (technically in England, Tithings and Hundreds) each probably comprising respectively a corresponding number of members, together with the necessary officers, viz. a tithing-man for each tithing, and a hundred-man for the hundred, thus making one hundred and eleven men, or Heads of houses in the territorial hundred^[447]. The Frankish law names the officers thus alluded to: in it the tithing-man is Decanus, the hundred-man Centenarius^[448]. The Anglosaxon law does not indeed mention its divisions by these names till a comparatively late period, when their significations had become in some respects altered; but it seems probable that it does imply them under the term Gegyldan, fellows, brothers of the gyld. In a case of aggravated crime it is provided that the offender’s relatives shall pay a third part of the fine, his gegyldan a third part, and if he cannot pay the remainder himself, he is to become an outlaw, i. e. forfeit his land and flee, perhaps formally abjure the country^[449]. Now it is 239perfectly clear that a law expressed in such general terms as these, cannot be directed to a particular and exceptional condition; that it does not apply to the accidental existence of gegyldan, but on the contrary assumes every man to have such: we cannot therefore construe it of voluntary associations formed for religious, social or funereal objects^[450], and for the purposes of this law we must look upon gegylda as a general name borne by every individual in respect of some gyld or association of which he was taken to be a member. The only meanings which the root gyld enables us to attach to the word gegylda are these; either, one who shares with others in paying; or, one who shares with others in worshipping. If we adopt the former rendering, we must suppose that certain contributions were made by a number of persons to a common purse, partly for festive purposes, partly as a mutual guarantee and club-fund for legal costs, for the expenses of reciprocal aid and defence, perhaps even for mortuary celebrations and charitable distributions. Another, though perhaps a less probable, suggestion is that such gegyldan may have been jointly responsible for taxes, or the outfit of armed men who attended in the fyrd or military expedition, on behalf of them all. But this we cannot further illustrate, in the absence of all 240record of the financial system of the early Teutonic monarchs, even those of Charlemagne himself, which would have been invaluable guides to us through the intricacies of that dark subject of enquiry. The second meaning given to gegylda would rest upon the assumption of some private and as it were hero-worship, common to the gyld-brothers,—a fact familiar enough to us in the Athenian φυλαι and Roman gentes; but the existence of any such foundation for the gyld among the Anglosaxons is extremely improbable, when we consider the small numbers that appear to have constituted the association, and that no trace of any such worship remains in our heathen mythology^[451]. I therefore prefer the first rendering of the word, and look upon gegyldan as representing those who mutually pay for one another; that is, under a system of pecuniary mulcts, those who are mutually responsible before the law,—the associates in the tithing and the hundred.

It is well known that in the later Anglosaxon law, and even to this day, the tithing and hundred appear as local and territorial, not as numerical divisions: we hear of tithings where there are more, and tithings where there are fewer people; we are told of the spoor of cattle being followed into one hundred, or out of another^[452]. I do not deny that in process of time these divisions had become territorial; 241but this does not of necessity invalidate the doctrine that originally the numbers were calculated according to the heads of families, or that the extent of territory, and not the taxable, military or corporate units, formed at first the varying quantity. Had it been otherwise we should naturally have found a much greater equality in the size of the territorial hundreds throughout at least each Saxon kingdom; nor in all probability would the numbers of the hundreds in respective counties differ so widely,—a difference intelligible only if we assume population, and not space, to have been the basis of the original calculation. Moreover to a very late period, in one part of England the abstract word Teoðung was replaced by the more concrete Tenmantale (tyn-manna-tǽl)^[453], to which it is impossible to give any meaning but the simple one the words express, viz. the tale or count of ten men. Again, as late as the tenth century, in a part of England where men, and not acres, became necessarily the subjects of calculation, viz. in the city of London^[454], we find the citizens distributing themselves into Friðgylds or associations for the maintenance of the peace, each consisting of ten men; while ten such 242gylds were gathered into a Hundred. The remarkable document known as “Judicia Civitatis Londinensis” gives the following detailed account of the whole proceeding:

“This is the ordinance which the bishops and the reeves belonging to London have ordained, and confirmed with pledges, among our friðgylds, as well eorlish as ceorlish, in addition to the dooms which were fixed at Greatley, at Exeter, and at Thundersfield.

“Resolved: That we count every ten men together, and the chief one to direct the nine in each of those duties which we have all ordained, and afterwards the hyndens of them together, and one hynden-man who shall admonish the ten for our common benefit; and let these eleven hold the money of the hynden, and decide what they shall disburse, when aught is to pay, and what they shall receive, should money accrue to us at our common suit^[455]....

“That we gather to us once in every month, if we can and have leisure, the hynden-men and those who direct the tithings, as well with butt-filling, or as else may please us, and know what of our agreement has been executed. And let these twelve men^[456] have their refection together, and feed themselves as they themselves think right, and deal the remains of the meat for love of God^[457].”

243Now as this valuable record mentions also territorial tithings, containing different amounts of population^[458], it seems to me to furnish important confirmation of the conclusion that the gegyldan of Ini and Ælfred, the members of the London tithings or friðgylds of ten, and the York tenmantale, are in truth identical. And it is further in favour of this view that the citizens called the members of such gildships, gegyldan^[459]:—

“And we have also ordained, respecting every man who has given his pledge in our gyldships, that, should he die, each gyld-brother (gegylda) shall give a gesufel-loaf for his soul, and sing a fifty (psalms), or cause the same to be sung within xxx days.”

Upon a review of the preceding passages it may be inferred that the hynden consisted of ten tithings, and consequently answered to what we more commonly call a hundred: it may perhaps be suggested that, if any distinction existed between these two terms, the hynden represented the numerical, the hundred the territorial division. But their original identity may be argued from an important passage in the law of Ini. He ordains^[460]: “He that is 244charged with mortal feud, and is willing to deny the slaying on oath; then shall there be in the hynden one king’s oath of thirty hides, as well for a noble as a churl, be it whichever it be.“

Now hynden can only mean one of two things, viz. a collection of ten or a collection of a hundred, according as we render the word hund. Admitting that at some very early period hund did mean ten, we yet never find it with any such signification in any book or MS., or indeed at all except in the numerals hundseofontig, hundeatatig, hundnigontig, hundtwelftig, where its force is anything but clear, when we compare those words with fíftig, sixtig, twentig, etc. On the other hand the adjective hynde does clearly denote something which has the quality of a hundred; thus a twyhynde or twelfhynde man is he whose life is worth respectively two or twelve hundred shillings. Again it is clear that the Judicia Civitatis Londinensis intends by hynden a collection of a hundred, and not of ten, men, inasmuch as it distinguishes this from the tithings. 245And further, it must be admitted, upon the internal evidence of the law itself, that a hundred and not a tithing is referred to, since so small a court as that of the ten men could not possibly have had cognizance of such a plea as manslaughter, or been competent to demand a king’s oath of thirty hides. But as such a plea might well be brought before the hundred-court, it is probable that such was meant. Lastly it was the custom for the hundred-court to be holden monthly, and we observe the same provision with the London hynden; at which it is very probable that legal matters were transacted, as well as accounts investigated; for it is expressly declared that their meeting is to ascertain how the undertakings in the record have been executed; that is, how the peace has been kept. I therefore conclude that the Hynden and the Hundred are in fact and were at first identical; with the hypothetical reservation, that at a later period the one word represented a numerical, the other a territorial division, when these two had ceased to coincide: in corroboration of which view it may be observed that the word Hynden does not occur in the laws later than the time of Æðelstán, nor Hundred earlier than that of Eádgár.

It is true that no division founded upon numbers can long continue to coincide with the first corresponding territorial allocation, however closely they may have been at first adjusted. In spite of every attempt to regulate it, population varies incessantly; but the tendency of land-divisions is to 246remain stationary for ages^[461]; a holy horror prevents the alteration of that which has been sanctified in men’s minds by long continuance, was perhaps more deeply sanctified at the first by religious ceremonies. The rights of property universally demand the jealous guardianship of boundaries. Moreover the first tithings, or at all events the first hundreds, must have had elbowroom enough within the Mark to allow for a considerable elasticity of population without the necessity of disturbing the ancient boundary; and thus we can readily understand two very distinct things to have grown up together, out of one origin, namely a constantly increasing number of gylds, yet a nearly or entirely stationary tale of territorial tithings and hundreds. I cannot but think that, under happier circumstances, this view might lead us to conclusions of the utmost importance with respect to the history of our race: that if it were possible for us now to ascertain the original number of hundreds in any county of which Beda in the eighth century gives us the population, and also the population at the period of the original division, we should find the two data in exact accordance, and thus obtain a clue to the movement of the population itself down to Beda’s time. Looking to the permanent character of land-divisions, 247and assuming that our present Hundreds nearly represent the original in number and extent, we might conclude that, if in the year 400 Kent was first divided, Thanet then contained only one hundred heads of houses, or hydes, upon three thousand acres of cultivated land, while in the time of Beda, three centuries later, it comprised six hundred families or hides upon eighteen thousand acres.

It is a common saying that we owe the institution of shire, tithing and hundred divisions to Ælfred. Stated in so broad a manner as this, I am compelled to deny the assertion. No one can contemplate the life and acts of that great prince and accomplished man without being filled with admiration and respect for his personal energy, his moral and enlightened policy, and the sound legislative as well as administrative principles on which he acted. But we must nevertheless not in the nineteenth century allow ourselves to be blinded by the passions and prejudices which ruled in the twelfth. The people, oppressed by foreign power, no doubt, long looked back with an affectionate regret to the memory of “England’s Darling;” he was the hero of a suffering nation; his activity and fortune had once cleared the land of Norman tyranny; his arm had smitten the forefathers of those whose iron yoke now weighed on England: he was the reputed author of those laws, which, under the amended and extended form enacted by the Confessor, were now claimed by the English people from their foreign kings: he was, in a word, the representative, and as it were very incarnation, 248of English nationality. We may smile at, but must yet respect, the feeling which made him also the representative of every good thing, which connected every institution or custom that his suffering countrymen regretted, with his time-hallowed name. It is unnecessary to detail the many ways in which this traditional character of Ælfred continually reappears; the object of these remarks is merely to point out that the attribution to him of the system of tithings, hundreds and the like, is one of many groundless assertions connected with his name. Not one word in corroboration of it is to be found in Asser or any other contemporaneous authority; and there is abundant evidence that the system existed long before he was born, not only in other German lands, but even among ourselves. Still I am unwilling to incur the responsibility of declaring the tradition absolutely without foundation: on the contrary it seems probable that Ælfred may have found it necessary, after the dreadful confusion and devastation of the Danish wars, to make a new muster or regulation of the tithings, nay even to cause, in some districts, a new territorial division to be established upon the old principle; and this is the more credible, since there is reason to believe that the same causes had rendered a new definition of boundaries generally necessary even in the case of private estates: the strongest argument against this lies however in the total silence of all contemporary writers. A less tenable supposition is, that Ælfred introduced such divisions for the first time into the countries which he united with Wessex; as 249it is impossible to conceive any Anglosaxon state to have existed entirely without them.

The form and nature of the institution, long known in the English law under the name of Frankpledge^[462] may be compendiously described in the words of the laws called Edward the Confessor’s^[463]. According to that document,—

“Another peace, the greatest of all, there is, whereby all are maintained in firmer state, to wit in the establishment of a guarantee, which the English 250call Friðborgas, with the exception of the men of York, who call it Tenmannetale, that is, the number of ten men. And it consists in this, that in all the vills throughout the kingdom, all men are bound to be in a guarantee by tens, so that if one of the ten men offend, the other nine may hold him to right. But if he should flee, and they allege that they could not have him to right, then should be given them by the king’s justice a space of at least thirty days and one: and if they could find him they might bring him to justice. But for himself, let him out of his own restore the damage he had done, or if the offence be so grave let justice be done upon his body. But if within the aforesaid term he could not be found, since in every friðborh there was one headman whom they called friðborg-heved, then this headman should take two of the best men of his friðborh, and the headman of each of the three friðborgs most nearly neighbouring to his own, and likewise two of the best in each, if he can have them; and so with the eleven others he shall, if he can, clear both himself and his friðborh both of the offence and flight of the aforesaid malefactor. Which if he cannot do, he shall restore the damage done out of the property of the doer, so long as this shall last, and out of his own and that of his friðborh: and they shall make amends to the justice according as it shall be by law adjudged them. And moreover the oath which they could not complete with the venue, the nine themselves shall make, viz. that they had no part in the offence. And if at any time they can recover him, 251they shall bring him to the justice, if they can, or tell the justice where he is^[464].”

Thus the object of the gylds or tithings was, that each man should be in pledge or surety (borh) as well to his fellow-man as to the state for the maintenance of the public peace: that he should enjoy protection for life, honour and property himself, and be compelled to respect the life, honour and property of others: that he should have a fixed and settled dwelling where he could be found when required, where the public dues could be levied, and the public services demanded of him: lastly that, if guilty of actions that compromised the public weal or trenched upon the rights and well-being of others, there might be persons especially appointed to bring him to justice; and if injured by others, supporters to pursue his claim and exact compensation for his wrong. All these points seem to have been very well secured by the establishment of the Tithings, to whom the community looked as responsible for the conduct of every individual comprised within them; and coupled with the family obligations which still remained in force in particular cases, they amply answered the purpose of a mutual guarantee between all classes of men. The system possessed the advantage of being necessarily regulated by neighbourhood, and it was free from some disadvantages which might have attended an exclusive reliance upon kinsmanship: 252the frðiborgas not having the bond of blood between them, which might have induced an improper partiality in favour of one of their members; and as they stood under responsibility for every act of a gyldsman, being interested in preventing an undue interference on the part of his family. We thus see that the gyldsmen were not only bound to present their fellows before the court of the freemen when specially summoned thereto, but that they found their own advantage in exercising a kind of police-surveillance over them all: if a crime were committed, the gyld were to hold the criminal to his answer; to clear him, if they could conscientiously do so, by making oath in his favour; to aid in paying his fine if found guilty; and if by flying from justice he admitted his crime, they were to purge themselves on oath from all guilty knowledge of the act, and all participation in his flight; failing which, they were themselves to suffer mulct in proportion to his offence. On the other hand they were to receive at least a portion of the compensation for his death, or of such other sums as passed from hand to hand during the progress of an Anglosaxon suit. Being his neighbours, the visnetum, vicinage or venue, they were his natural compurgators or witnesses, and consequently, being examined on oath, in some sense the jurati or jurors upon whose verdict his weal or woe depended. And thus the importance of character, so frequently appealed to even in our modern jurisprudence, was carried to the highest extent.

We may reasonably conclude that the close intercourse 253thus created, was improved to private and social purposes, and that these gylds, like the much larger associations of the same name in after times, knew how to combine pleasure with business. The citizens of London hint at a monthly symposium or treat, with butt-filling, when the tithingmen met together to settle the affairs of their respective hundreds,—a trait not yet extinct in the civic, or indeed the national, character. There can also be little doubt that the gylds even formed small courts of arbitration, as well as police, for the settlement of such trifling disputes between members of the same gyld, as were not worthy of being reserved for the interference of a superior tribunal^[465]; and it is also probable that the members considered themselves bound to aid in the festivities or do honour to the obsequies of any individual gyld-brother: the London gyldsmen were to distribute alms, and cause religious services to be performed at the decease of a fellow; and it is obvious that this sharing in a religious obligation, the benefits of which were to extend even into another life, must 254have impressed somewhat of a solemn and sacred character upon the whole institution^[466].

Much of what has been observed respecting the tithing, applies also to the hundred. This, it has been seen, was originally a collection of ten tithings, and was presided over by a hundredes ealdor^[467], or hundred-man, who exercised a jurisdiction over his circuit and its inhabitants. From the concurrent practice of later periods we may conclude that his court was holden monthly for the hearing of such civil and lighter criminal causes as could not be settled in the tithing, or interested more tithings than one^[468]. It is not probable that the higher criminal causes could at any period be pursued in the hundred^[469], but that they were necessarily reserved for the consideration of the folcmót or 255shire-court, which met three times in the year. In the later legislation, trial of capital offences was reserved for the scyremót, and the words of Tacitus^[470] seem to imply that this was the case in his time also: perhaps even such causes as involved the penalties of outlawry may have been beyond the jurisdiction of the hundred. It is however less as a court of justice than as part of a system for the maintenance of peace, that we are to contemplate the hundred. It may be securely affirmed that where the tithing alone could not be made responsible, or more tithings than one were involved in a similar difficulty as to crimes committed by their members, resort was had to the responsibility of the collective hundred,—a principle which, it is well-known, subsists even to this day.

At a comparatively late period, we occasionally find a consolidation of hundreds into one body, for judicial purposes, presided over by the ealdorman of the shire, or his geréfa, and forming a subsidiary court to the shiremoot: and after immunities, or private jurisdictions, had become rapidly extended, it is certain that such consolidations were not unusual, in the hands of great civil or ecclesiastical authorities, and that they, by means of their officers or geréfan, held plea in several hundreds at once; they thus substituted their own power for that of the ealdorman or the sheriff, in the last instance, throughout the district comprehended by their immunity; either replacing the old hundred-men by 256geréfan or bailiffs, or suffering the hundreds to be still governed and administered in the way common to all such divisions, by the elective officer^[471].

It stands to reason that the system above described applied only to the really free. It was the form of the original compact between the independent members of an independent community. But as by the side of the free landholders, there dwelt also unfree men of various ranks, so also there existed modifications of the original compact, suited to their condition. Those who in a more or less stringent degree were dependent, could not be members of the tithing, the hundred or the folcmót. They stood to right among themselves, in their lord’s court, not in the people’s, and in the latter they could not appear for themselves. The institution therefore which provided that the lord might maintain a Comitatus or following, provided also that its members should all be in his mund (protection) and borh (surety), and that he should make answer for them in the courts from which they were themselves excluded^[472].

257It is difficult to decide whether the lords or nobles were at first comprised within the popular corporations: it appears most probable that they were not; that they were sufficient to their own defence, and, even from the earliest historical periods, in possession of that immunity which released their lands from the jurisdiction of the popular tribunals. In respect therefore to the gylds, they may be supposed to have held an independent, though not necessarily hostile, position, regulated indeed by the public law: and if they stood to right with their men, in the folcmót, it was the collective power and dignity of the state with which they had to deal, and not the smaller associations, founded upon necessities of which they were not conscious. Their dependents were under their guarantee and surety, as the members of every man’s household, his wife, children and serfs, were under his: for them he was responsible to the community at large, but he owed no suit or service to others, and if he persisted in upholding wrong, I fear the only corrective was to be found in the inalienable ius belli, which resumes its power instantly upon the violation 258of that tacit understanding among men, that the well-being of society depends upon a regulated mutual forbearance. Those were not ages in which acts of self-defence or righteous retribution could be misnamed revolutions. But all these remarks are intended to apply only to a state of society in which the nobles were few and independent, the people strong and united; where the people were in truth the aristocracy^[473], and the nobles only their chiefs. The holder of an immunity (having sacn and sócn) in later times, under a consolidated royalty representing the national will, and in a state from which the element of the people had nearly vanished, through the almost total vanishing of small independent freeholds, was necessarily placed in a very different position.

It now remains only to bestow a few words upon the manner in which the original obligations of the family bond were gradually brought to bear upon the artificial organization.

Upon a careful consideration of the latter it appears that its principal object was gained when either offences were prevented, or the offender presented to justice: the consequences of crime, in all but a few excepted cases, fell not upon the gegyldan 259(if they could clear themselves of participation) but upon the mǽgas or relatives^[474].

The laws of Æðelberht, Wihtræd and Hloðhere know nothing of gegyldan: with them the mǽgas are still wholly responsible, and even their intervention is noticed in three cases only: Æðelberht provided that in the event of a manslayer flying the country, the family should pay half the wergyld of the slain^[475]. Again he enacts, that if a married woman die without bearing children, the property she brought her husband, and that which he settled upon her after consummation, shall return to her paternal relatives^[476]. According to the legislation of Hloðhere, if a man died, leaving a wife and child, the mother was to have the custody of the child till his tenth year, but the paternal kinsmen were to administer his property, under satisfactory pledge for due discharge of their duty^[477]. The regulations 260of Ini allow us to enter still further into the nature of the family engagement. He enacted that if a stranger came through the wood out of the highway, and attempted to slink through in secret, without shouting or blowing his horn, he should be taken to be a thief, and might be slain or forced to pay according to his presumed crime: and if the slayer were then pursued for his wergyld, he might make oath that he slew him for a thief, and the lord and the gegyldan of the dead man should not be allowed to make oath to the contrary: but if the slayer had at the time concealed the deed, and it was only afterwards discovered, a presumption of unfair dealing was raised against him, and the kindred of the dead man were entitled to make oath of his innocence^[478]. Again if a stranger were slain, the king was to have two parts of his wergyld, the son or relatives of the dead man might claim the third; but if there were no relatives, the king claimed half, the count half^[479]. Besides a provision for a surviving 261child, similar to that of Hloðhere^[480], the law of Ini contains no further regulation with regard to the mǽgas of the freeman. Four several chapters referring to serfs who are guilty of theft, rest upon the principle that his kin have renounced the mǽgburh by suffering him to remain in serfage, and together with the obligations of kinsman have relinquished their own right of avenging his injuries or making pursuit for his wrongs^[481].

The duties of the mǽgsceaft or kinship are developed with considerable detail in the law of Ælfred: the most general regulation is that which acknowledges the right of a man to have the aid of his kindred in all those excepted cases where the custom and the law still permitted the waging of fǽhðe or private war: “After the same fashion, may a man fight on behalf of his born kinsman, if any wrongfully attack him; except indeed against his lord: that we permit not^[482].” Other clauses provide that where a wrongdoer is taken into custody, and agrees peaceably to abide the decision of the law, his relatives shall have due notice^[483]: “If he pledge himself to a lawful act, and belie himself therein, let 262him humbly surrender his arms and his goods to his friends, to hold for him, and let him remain for forty days in prison in a king’s tún; let him there suffer as the bishop may direct him; and let his kinsmen feed him, if he have himself no food; but if he have no kinsmen, or no food, let the king’s reeve feed him.” Again if a man is accidentally slain while hewing wood with others, his kinsmen are to have the tree, and remove it from the land within thirty days, otherwise it shall go to the owner of the wood^[484]. The most important case of all, however, is that of a divided responsibility between the kinsmen and the gegyldan, which Ælfred thus regulates: “If one that hath no paternal kindred fight and slay a man, if then he have maternal relatives, let them pay a third part of the wer, his gyldbrethren a third part, and for a third part let him flee. If he have no maternal relatives, let his gyldbrethren pay half, and for half let him flee. And if any one slay such a man, having no relatives, let half be paid to the king, half to the gyldbrethren^[485].” It was also the principle of Ælfred’s law, recognized but not introduced by him, that no man should have the power of alienating from his mǽgsceaft, booklands whose first acquirer had entailed them upon the family,—a principle which 263tends, as far as human means seem capable of ensuring it, to ensure its permanent maintenance^[486].

The reciprocal rights and duties of the mǽgburh were similarly understood by Eádweard: he enacted that if a malefactor were deserted by his relatives, and they refused to make compensation for him, he should be reduced to serfage; but in this case his wergyld was to abate from the kindred^[487]. And Æðelstan distinctly holds the mǽgð responsible for their kinsman. He says, “If a thief be put into prison, let him remain there forty days, and then let him be ransomed for 120 shillings, and let the kindred go surety for him that he shall cease from theft for the future. And if after that he steal, let them pay for him with his wergyld, or replace him in prison^[488].” But he goes further than this, and imposes upon them the duty of finding a lord for him, or exposing him to the penalty of outlawry: “And we have ordained respecting those lordless men of whom no law can be got, that the kindred be commanded to domicile him to folkright, and find him a lord in the folkmote; and if then they will not or cannot produce him at the term, let him thenceforth be an outlaw, and let whoso cometh at him slay him^[489]:” a provision which 264obviously cannot apply to free landowners, who would have been included in a tithing, and could not have been thus compulsorily commended to a lord. Where a man is slain as a thief, the relatives are to clear him, if they can^[490], inasmuch as they would have a right to pursue the slayer and claim the compensation for their kinsman’s death. Again it is provided that if a lord has so many dependents that he cannot personally exercise a due supervision over them, he shall appoint efficient reeves or bailiffs in his several manors, to be answerable to him. And if need be, the bailiff shall cause twelve relatives of any man whom he cannot trust, to enter into sureties for him^[491].

Eádmund permitted the mǽgð to avoid the consequences of their kinsman’s act, by refusing to abet him in his feud^[492]. I imagine that this law must be taken in connection with that of Eádweard^[493], and that it implies a total desertion of the criminal by his kindred, with all its consequences, viz. loss of liberty to him, and of his wergyld to them. The troubled time of Æðelred, “the ill-advised,” supplies another attempt to secure peace by holding the relatives strictly and personally responsible: in his law we find it enacted, “If breach of the peace be 265committed within a town, let the inhabitants of the town go in person, and take the murderers, alive or dead, or their nearest of kin, head for head. If they will not, let the ealdorman go; if he will not, let the king go; if he will not, let the whole district be in a state of war^[494].” Though this perhaps is less a settled rule of law than the convulsive effort of an authority striving in vain to maintain itself amid civil discords and the horrors of foreign invasion, it still consecrates the old principle, and returns to the true basis on which Anglosaxon society was founded, namely treaties of peace and mutual guarantee between the several parties that made up the State.

Such were the means by which the internal peace of the land was attempted to be secured, and it is evident that better could hardly have been devised in a state of society where population was not very widely dispersed, and where property hardly existed, save in land, and almost equally unmanageable cattle. The summary jurisdiction of our police magistrates, our recognizances and bail and binding over to keep the peace, are developments rendered necessary by our altered circumstances; but these are nevertheless institutions of the same nature as those on which our forefathers relied. The establishment of our County-courts, in which justice goes forth from man to man, and without original writ from the Crown, is another step toward the ancient principle of our jurisprudence, in the old Hundred.

266A further inquiry now arises, as to the basis upon which all calculations as to satisfaction between man and man were founded; in other words to the system of Wergylds and its various corollaries: this will form the subject of a separate chapter.

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