http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/
Anglo-Saxon Law and
Order
issued in 962-3 for example, specifically talks
about:
'...measures common to all the nation, whether
English, Danes, or Britons, in every province of my
kingdom, to the end that poor man and rich may
possess what they rightly acquire...'
By Michael Wood July 2006
Regional customs
The Anglo-Saxon kings
were adept at framing laws
that reflected their authority.
But they had the sense to
take local customs into
account when doing so.
Detail from stained-glass window,
showing an Anglo-Saxon Earl of
Mercia
Regional sensibilities
It's easy to forget, as we contemplate today's British
monarchy drained of its once magical aura, that
kingship was one of the great medieval institutions.
And English medieval kingship again was a
creation of the tenth century (we even still use their
coronation order!). This was the institution on
which the ultimate responsibility for social order
rested. And it was the kingship of Alfred of Wessex
and his successors that gave substance to the
English state.
The Anglo-Saxon kings who were most praised and
best remembered were kings whose power base
wasn't just in southern England. Athelstan grew up
in the Midlands and presumably spoke with a
Midlands accent, even though he was the son of a
southern king. Although men like Athelstan and
Edgar, his brother, were kings of Wessex, their
interests and their friendships needed to be more
national.
Success as a medieval king depended on
maintaining a delicate approach which paid close
attention to local sensibilities. You can see this
particularly well in the law codes. Edgar's code,
We can see that, by the
960s, the Anglo-Saxon
kings were taking into
account several different
linguistic groupings. These comprised those of the
southern English, the West Saxons, the Mercians,
the East Angles, and the Danes.
They also included the 'Britons' - speakers of Celtic
languages (Welsh speakers on the English side of
Offa's Dyke, Cornish speakers in the south-west,
Cumbrians in the north-west). It is obvious from
their legislation that they allowed for regional
difference in custom too. At one point, Edgar
actually says:
'It is my will that secular rights be in force among
the Danes according to as good laws as they can
best decide on... Among the English, however,
whatever I and my advisors have added to the
customs of my ancestors for the benefit of all the
nation.'
'It was they [the Danes] who evolved the 12-man
jury system. This was soon borrowed by the English
...'
For example, in the lands settled by the Danes,
people had marriage customs particular to the
region. Their administrative practice and land
tenure were also different in practice and
terminology. In the north, people had 'wapentakes'
instead of hundreds to describe administrative areas,
and they counted in 'carucates' instead of hides. A
hide was an area of about 120 acres, the amount of
land traditionally believed to be adequate to support
one family.
The legal traditions of the Danes were also
different. It was they who evolved the 12-man jury
system. This was soon borrowed by the English,
who exported it to the rest of the world, and now
claim to have invented it.
The grounds he gave were that they intended to
depose and kill him, along with members of his
council.
Racial tension
These orders do not appear to have been widely
carried out - perhaps even then people saw through
the spin and were reluctant to turn out at the
exhortation of a manipulative leader. But there is a
later tradition that the Danes in Oxford took refuge
in the church of St Frideswide, where they were
burned by a mob inflamed by anti-Danish rhetoric.
You had to be careful of
local feeling, during
Anglo-Saxon times, and
good kings usually were.
That's not to say that
there weren't many
tensions in the early
English polity. We know that freedom of access
across the Watling Street border between the
English Midlands and the Danish Midlands seems
to have been allowed from Athelstan's time onward,
presumably for traders.
But there are hints in the 960s that some people
thought Edgar had allowed too many foreigners and
foreign customs into the country. There is even a
letter in which somebody in southern England
complains about his brother adopting too many
Danish customs and wearing his hair in an unEnglish style.
'I tell you, brother Edward, now that you ask, you
do wrong to abandon the good English practices of
your fathers, and in falling in love with heathen
ways… insulting your ancestors by dressing in
Danish fashion...' - Letter from an unknown AngloSaxon (source: British Library)
'Just as today, there were times when resentment
against immigrants could create tensions and be
exploited by politicians. '
Which reminds us, as if we ever need reminding,
that the people of the past are people like us; and it
reminds us too that just as today, there were times
when resentment against immigrants could create
tensions and be exploited by politicians.
It seems possible, for example, that at the height of
the Danish attacks in 1002, Ethelred the Unready
tried to fan racial hatred against Danish settlers in
southern England. According to a later tradition, the
paranoid Ethelred gave orders (sent by letter to all
his agents in the towns) inciting the English to
massacre Danish communities in southern towns.
That a late Old English government could try to
harness this kind of hatred suggests the tensions
which lay under the surface of their state. As their
law codes reveal, they faced massive problems of
social order, and on a smaller scale had to deal with
many of the same sorts of practical political
problems that we do today. Perhaps that helps us to
be realistic about the extent of their achievement, as
well as the difficulties they faced.
The oath of loyalty
Anglo-Saxon kings were prolific law-makers
So how did such early
societies create an
allegiance? How do
you create a sense of
mutual obligation and
responsibility in a
people? It is of course
a frequently asked
question even today the question of the balance between rights and duties.
In any state you need law, a written statement of the
social norms that society, as represented by a governing
body, seeks to enforce. And the Anglo-Saxon state
produced lots of law - legal texts are among its most
distinctive and most characteristic productions.
Of course, to govern a medium-sized state (in early
medieval terms) you had to meet rather different
concerns from those for which law had previously
provided. Early English law had been framed for tribal
societies, and was based on the feud, on redress of
injury, rather than on a mutual sense of responsibility to
the community. In the Viking era, law-making begins to
change to reflect new social conditions.
'Crime is no longer only an injury to the victim, but a
crime against society at large.'
Although no innovator himself, Alfred laid the
foundation for a lawful society, making his principal
parallel with the Biblical law of Moses. As he saw it, the
English could - and should - be a chosen people,
answerable to God. In the tenth century, when the
English state was created, that perception became the
underpinning of the king's law. Crime became no longer
an injury to the victim only, but a crime against society
at large, against the English nation - the same nation we
read of in Archbishop Wulfstan's sermons, or in the
'Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'.
Law and order
The new conception of
royal justice was
aggressive. The AngloSaxons had brutal corporal
and capital punishments at
their disposal, including
'the ordeal' and grisly
mutilations. And they also
tried to persuade, cajole, or
enforce allegiance with the common oath. Like many
traditional societies, the Anglo-Saxons placed a high
value on a person's word, their sworn promise.
At the heart of the tenth-century state was the oath, taken
by all freemen from the age of 12, to abstain from and
denounce any major crime. This common oath enshrined
the sense of social community and responsibility that
underpinned the law. In this light, theft was seen as an
act of disloyalty. If you had broken your oath and
committed a serious crime your entire kin could be
punished. In the old days the local assembly or the king's
court would try you. In the new Anglo-Saxon state there
was a hierarchy of courts in each shire and borough, and
revamped local courts known as 'hundred' courts.
The presiding officials of these courts were, in effect,
local agents of the king - royal appointees. Local cases
would be heard in the hundred courts and it was the
obligation of the hundred to find the miscreant and bring
him back to face justice and, if necessary, to punish the
kin.
The hundred would organise the pursuit of notable
criminals who fled, and punishment could include exile you could be transported with your kin group to a
completely different part of the country. Harsh methods,
to be sure, but these were harsh times.
'The Christian king must severely punish wicked men...
He must be merciful and yet austere; that is the king's
right - and that is the way to get things done in a nation.'
- Archbishop Wulfstan
Crime and violence were the central problem for the
early English kings, all the more so as they were
Christians who saw it as their job to be Christ's vicar on
earth. In one of his law codes, King Athelstan is
recorded apologising for the bad state of public order: 'I
am sorry my peace is kept so badly. My advisors say I
have put up with it too long'.
'King Athelstan... was concerned about the number of
young people being executed ... '
With brutal punishments at their disposal, it would have
been easy for a king to respond with an iron fist. Which
makes the mitigating touches of humanity that we
occasionally find all the more touching. King Athelstan,
for example, is reported saying to his councillors that he
was concerned about the number of young people being
executed under the death penalty, 'as he sees everywhere
is the case'.
In his day, the penalty could be enforced on anyone 12
years old or over, but the king raised the age of criminal
responsibility to 16 because, as he said simply, 'it is too
cruel'. That, remember, is around 930, while as late as
the early 19th century there are cases of ten, nine and
even eight year olds being executed for sheep stealing!
The story provides a salutary warning against having a
patronising attitude to the people of the past, or
assuming our ancestors of 1,000 years ago were more
cruel, or less civilised, than we are. This was a genuine
effort to create a humane government, however
unpalatable some of its methods may seem to us now,
and however ineffectual the king sometimes admitted
they were at the time.