The sentence of outlawry was usually the starting-point for a wandering life, which by necessity became a life of brigandage. To be declared an outlaw, a crime {257} or a misdemeanor must have been committed; a private suit of a purely civil character was not enough;[346] but to come within sight of the gallows, no great guilt was necessary; hence the large number of outlaws. In a criminal lawsuit of the time of Edward I[347] the judge explains from his bench that the law is this: if the thief has taken anything worth more than twelve pence, or if he has been condemned several times for little thefts, and the total may be worth twelve pence or more, he ought to be hanged: “The law wills that he shall be hanged by the neck.” Still, as the judge observes in the case of a woman who had stolen a carpet lying on a hedge, worth eightpence, the law is milder than in the days of Henry III, for then a theft of the value of fourpence would hang a man.[348] [Illustration 49. FOREST LIFE—A SHOOTING CASUALTY. (_From the MS. 10 E. IV._)] The man became an outlaw, and the woman a _weyve_, that is, abandoned to the mercy of every one and unable to claim the protection of justice. The author of “Fleta” expresses with terrible force the condition of persons so punished; they have wolves heads which may be cut off with impunity: “For she is a weyve whom no one will own, and it is equivalent to outlawry so far as penal consequences go. An outlaw and a weyve bear wolves {258} heads, which may be cut off by any one with impunity, for deservedly ought they to perish without law who would refuse to live according to law.”[349] The outlaw lost all his property and rights; all the contracts to which he was a party fell void; he was no longer bound to any one nor anybody bound to him. His goods were forfeit: “the chattels of an outlaw shall belong to our lord the king”; if he had lands the king kept the usufruct for a year and a day, at the end of which he restored them to the chief lord (_capitalis dominus_).[350] There were also hard legal rules on this subject; a man accused of murder and acquitted suffered confiscation nevertheless, if he had fled, fearing justice. Listen to the magistrate: “If a man be acquitted of manslaughter and of assent and help, the justices shall thereupon ask the jury if the prisoner took to flight; if they say No, let him go quits, if Yes, the king shall have his chattels.”[351] It may be {259} readily believed that the draconian severity of such regulations was not calculated to lessen the audacity of those whom they concerned, and that the excessive rigour of these penalties would often transform the fugitive of a day, who had doubted the clear-sightedness of the judge, into a professional brigand and highway robber.