Читать книгу A Source-Book of English Social History - M. E. Monckton Jones - Страница 6

Table of Contents

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.

(5) Compensation, already reckoned in money though not always paid in coin (cf. 59), is the customary quittance for every offence.

(9) 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.

(74, 77) Status of woman high; marriage a business contract.

Laws of Ine

(20, 43) Most of England is still under woodland.

(25) Trade already considerable (cf. Athelstane, 10, 13).

(42) Farming done in common; use of quickset as well as temporary hurdle fences.

(44, 49) 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.

(30, 32) Survival of Paganism, possibly reinforced by Danish influence.

(39) 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 (34), in Edward’s (12), 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 (cf. Ine, 67; Alfred, 23; Athelstane, 8, 10, etc.).

It was in most cases a fair, voluntary bargain (cf. Boundary Dispute), 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.