him safe to his kindred, and be contented with the compensation; but, if he refuses to deliver up his arms, it is then lawful to fight him. A slave might fight in his master’s quarrel; a father might fight in his son’s, with any one except with his master.
King Edmund, moreover, in the preamble to his laws, alluded to the multiplicity of private feuds and battles, established various enactments to check the evil; and regulated certain compensations for the loss of life, without any distinction between murder and manslaughter: every head had its price, from the king’s, that was valued at 30,000 thrimsas, considered to be about 1,300l. to that of a ceorle, or husbandman, 266; in this tariff, an archbishop’s head was rated at a much higher value than a monarch’s.
The price all wounds and injuries was also regulated: a wound of an inch long under the hair, one shilling; one of a like size in the face, two shillings; the loss of an ear, thirty shillings; and, according to the rare code of Ethelbert, any one who committed adultery with another man’s wife was obliged to buy him a new one.
This commutation for crimes appears to have been universal in ancient times. Blackstone informs us that in Ireland, by the Brehon laws, a murderer was obliged to give the surviving relatives of the slain a recompense, called Eviach. In Homer we have the same practice during the Trojan war; Nestor in his speech to Achilles thus addressing him:—If a brother bleed, On just atonement we remit the deed: A sire the slaughter of his son forgives: The price of blood discharged, the murderer lives. And again, in the 18th book of the Iliad, in the description of Achilles’s shield:— There in the Forum swarms a numerous train— The subject of debate, a townsman slain; One pleads the fine discharged, which one denied, And bade the public and the law decide.
The most curious part of this law of compensation was the weighing the value of a witness:—a man whose life was worth one hundred and twenty shillings counterbalanced six labourers, the life of each being estimated at twenty shillings; his oath was therefore considered equivalent to that of all the six.
These laws descended from the Germans, who, with the exception of the Frisians, sought to check the natural propensity of the people to acts of bloodthirsty revenge: thus we find, that if any man called another pare, or accused him of having lost his shield in battle, he had to pay a heavy fine; according to the laws of the Lombards, if a man called another arga, or “good for nothing,” he had a right to demand immediate satisfaction by arms.
These compensations and fines were called a fredum. For the proofs of guilt, ordeals similar to those described as having existed in France and other countries on the continent of Europe, were adopted in England: one of them, which was abolished in France by Louis le Debonnaire as impious, long prevailed amongst us—the decision of the cross.
The compurgators were to be freemen, and relations or neighbours of the accused, who upon their oath corroborated what he had asserted. It appears that in some cases the concurrence of no less than three hundred of these auxiliary witnesses was required. As men who are capable of disregarding truth are not deterred by the solemnity of an oath, this system of compurgation was found to be fraught with such flagrant iniquity, that appeals to Heaven were considered more effectual in ascertaining guilt or innocence.
The trials by hot iron and water were similar to those already described. In addition to these ordalies was the trial by the consecrated bread and cheese, or Corsned, commonly appealed to by the clergy when they were accused of any crime, and adopted by them, since it was not attended with danger or inconvenience. This ordeal was performed in the following manner:—A piece of barley-bread and a piece of cheese were consecrated; and prayers were then put up, to supplicate that God would send his angel Gabriel to stop the gullet of the priest, so that he might not be able to swallow the sacred bread and cheese, if he were guilty. This ceremony being concluded, the accused approached the altar, and took up the testing food: if he swallowed freely, he was declared innocent; if, on the contrary, it stuck in his throat, (which we may presume was rarely the case,) he was pronounced guilty. Our historians assert that Godwin Earl of Kent, in the reign of Edward the Confessor, abjuring the death of the King’s brother, at last appealed to the Corsned, “per buccellam deglutiendam abjuravit,” which stuck in his throat and killed him.
Whether, in the settlement of feuds, pecuniary compensation was deemed more satisfactory than the adversary’s blood, it is not an easy matter to decide; but certain it is, that duels do not appear, until the period alluded to, to have been as frequent in England as upon the Continent. Good cheer, and good horses, seem to have been considered as equivalent to cash: we find in our history a woman giving two hundred fat hens to the sovereign for permission to spend one night in prison with her husband, and bringing the monarch one hundreds fowls on account; while another unlucky wight gave five of his best palfreys to his sovereign lord the King to induce him to be silent regarding a faux pas of his wife. But, once established, it appears that trials by battle prevailed in England for a longer period than in any other country.
In 1096, William Count d’Eu, having been accused of a conspiracy against William Rufus by Godefroi Baynard, engaged him in single combat at Salisbury, in presence of the King and the whole court: the unfortunate count, having been worsted, was forthwith ordered to be emasculated, after both his eyes had been put out; his esquire at the same time whipped, and then hanged. Jussuque ideò Regis et concilii, ejiciuntur illi oculi testiculique abscinduntur; dapifero suo Willielmo de Aldori, filio amitæ ejus, sæviter flagellato et suspenso.
On Henry II.’s invasion of Wales, Henry de Essex, the hereditary standard-bearer, having been accused of felony by Robert de Montfort, his own relation, for dropping the standard on the field of battle and taking to flight, exclaiming that the King was killed, the parties met in single combat near Reading Abbey, where Essex was left for dead upon the field. However, upon his body being borne to the abbey, the monks perceived some traces of life; and, instead of his being hanged according to custom, the brethren of the monastery recovered him; but, as he was considered morally dead, he spent the remainder of his days in their holy cloisters.
From the time of William of Normandy, until that of Henry II, trial by single combat was the only honourable mode of decision of battle of right, until the alternative of the grand assizes, or the trial by jury, was instituted by the latter sovereign.
When the tenant in a writ of right pleaded the general issue, and offered to decide the cause by the body of a champion, a piece of ground was selected sixty feet square, inclosed with lists, and on one side a court was erected for the accommodation of the judges of the court of Common Pleas, who attended there in their scarlet robes: a bar was also prepared for the sergeants learned in law. When the court sat, which was before sun-rising, proclamation was made for both parties and their champions: the latter were introduced by two knights, and were dressed in a coat of mail, with red sandals, bare-legged from the knee downwards, bare-headed, and with arms bare to the elbows. The weapons allowed them were batons, or staves of an ell long, and a four-cornered leathern target, so that death very seldom ensued from these civil combats. In the court military, however, they fought with sword and lance.
When the champions thus armed arrived within the lists, or place of combat, the champion of the tenant took his adversary by the hand, and made oath that the tenement in dispute was not the right of the demandant; the champion of the demandant of course took a contrary oath. Another oath was then taken against sorcery and enchantment, in the following form:
“Hear this, ye justices, that I have neither eaten, drunk, nor have I upon me either bone, stone, or grass—no enchantment, sorcery, or witchcraft, whereby the law of God may be abased, or the law of the devil exalted; so help me God and his saints!”
The battle then began, and the combatants were bound to fight till the stars appeared in the evening; and, if the champion of the tenant could defend himself till the stars appeared, the tenant prevailed in his cause, and the vanquished was proclaimed
