Homepage
Login
Profile
BookClubs
dmBox
Read Ebook: A Source-Book of English Social History by Jones M E Monckton Mary Evelyn Monckton
Font size:
Background color:
Text color:
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page
Ebook has 1094 lines and 71693 words, and 22 pages
CHAP. PAGE
A SOURCE-BOOK OF ENGLISH SOCIAL HISTORY
SAXON VILLAGE AND MANORIAL SYSTEMS
INTRODUCTORY NOTES
Laws of Ethelbert
These laws are dated A.D. 600, only three years after the coming of St. Augustine. Throughout them and the later dooms the educative effect of Christianity in its Roman form is to be traced. Hitherto law had been oral, traditional, unrecorded; these customary laws are now first reduced to written form and made permanent for the local kingdom.
Compensation, already reckoned in money though not always paid in coin , is the customary quittance for every offence.
Crime, hitherto an offence only against the victim and his kin, is here further treated as an offence against the community represented by the King.
Status of woman high; marriage a business contract.
Laws of Ine
Most of England is still under woodland.
Trade already considerable .
Farming done in common; use of quickset as well as temporary hurdle fences.
Important place of swine in Saxon economy.
Laws of Alfred
Influence of Church supreme in the form and matter of the laws, the Mosaic infused among Saxon customary rules.
Survival of Paganism, possibly reinforced by Danish influence.
Woodland not yet cleared of wild beasts.
Laws of Athelstane
Note here the practice of local minting, now confined to officers of the Church or King; also the use of horses as well as oxen in farm labour.
Legislation is now by the King in council and the whole series of excerpts show the re-establishment of order and royal authority based on the fundamental principle of loyalty to the oath. The sworn bond between man and lord was already in Alfred's reign the most sacred, its breach constituting treason for which no money penalty might atone.
Growth of Trade
This is apparent in Alfred's laws , in Edward's , and Athelstane's; it is regulated by royal and not by local authority; and disputes between Dane and Saxon lead to the general imposition of the rule of "Commendation" of landless men to lords, which gave rise to the Saxon system later called manorial.
Boundary Dispute, 896 A.D.
Note the power of the local Witan to try property cases; the co-operation of bishop and chapter in the grant; the instance of commendation; the priest's position as spokesman of the villagers.
Manorial System
Fitzherbert's account of the rise of manors ignores the Saxon basis for the grouping of tenants under a lord to whom they paid service for their lands. This system did not begin at the Conquest but earlier .
It was in most cases a fair, voluntary bargain , in which one party owed protection, military and legal, in return for the labour of the other. This feudal compact enabled the country to pass through the Danish troubles and consequent disorder under the leadership of the lords. Once security had been re-established by the central power of the Angevin kings, both the need for lords and their sense of responsibility for their men faded and their power was abused till the economic forces of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries gave the men a means of resistance.
Custumals of Battle Abbey
It is possible from these details to construct a vivid scene of manorial life. Owners of ecclesiastical manors were usually more liberal to their tenants than lay lords. Interesting features are the work of the lord's officer, the Reeve; the fact that while a half-hide may support a considerable family, the work of only one member is required to do the services; the ease with which the elaborate details of the services led to disputes; the ranks of the various villeins and the consequent difference in the service each paid; the constant use of barter, goods being paid rather than money.
SAXON LAWS OR DOOMS
ETHELBERT
If a man slay another in the king's tun let him make bot with fifty shillings.
If a freeman steal from a freeman, let him make threefold bot; and let the king have the wite and all the chattels.
If any one be the first to make an inroad into a man's tun let him make bot with six shillings; let him who follows with three shillings; after, each, a shilling.
If a man slay another, let him make bot with ... a hundred shillings.
If any one bind a freeman, let him make bot with twenty shillings.
Let maiden-bot be as that of a freeman.
If a man buy a maiden with cattle let the bargain stand, if it be without guile, but if there be guile, let him bring her home again, and let his property be restored to him.
OF THE DOOMS OF INE
If a far-coming man or a stranger journey through a wood out of the highway, and neither shout nor blow his horn, he is to be held for a thief, either to be slain or redeemed.
If a chapman traffic up among the people, let him do it before witnesses....
A ceorl's close ought to be fenced winter and summer. If it be unfenced and his neighbours' cattle stray in through his own gap, he shall have nothing from the cattle: let him drive it out and bear the damage.
If ceorls have a common meadow, or other partible land to fence, and some have fenced their part, some have not, and eat up their common corn or grass, let those go who own the gap, and compensate to the others who have fenced their part, the damage which there may be done, and let them demand such justice on the cattle as it may be right. But if there be a beast that breaks hedges and goes in everywhere, and he who owns it will nor or cannot restrain it; let him who finds it in his field take it and slay it, and let the owner take its skin and flesh and forfeit the rest.
When anyone burns a tree in a wood, and it be found out against him who did it, let him pay the full wite; let him give sixty shillings because fire is a thief. If anyone fell in a wood a good many trees, and be afterwards discovered; let him pay for three trees, each with thirty shillings. He need not pay for more of them, were there so many of them as might be; because the axe is an informer, not a thief.
But if anyone cut down a tree under which thirty swine may stand, and it be discovered let him pay sixty shillings.
If a man among his mast find unallowed swine, then let him take a wed of six shillings value.... If pannage be taken for swine, of those three fingers thick in fat, the third; of those two fingers, the fourth; of those a thumb thick, the fifth.
A cow's horn shall be worth two pence; an ox's tail shall be worth a shilling; a cow's shall be five pence; an ox's eye shall be worth five pence; a cow's shall be worth a shilling. There shall always be given as barley-rent from one wyrhta six pounds.
If a man agree for a yard of land, or more, at a fixed rent, and plough it; if the lord desire to raise the land to him to service and to rent, he need not take it upon him, if the lord do not give him a dwelling, and let him lose the crop.
A sheep shall go with its fleece until Midsummer, or let the fleece be paid for with two pence.
ALFRED'S DOOMS
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page