Our Legal Heritage: King AEthelbert - King George III, 600 A.D. - 1776Reilly, S. A.
History
Our Legal Heritage: King AEthelbert - King George III, 600 A.D. - 1776
Reilly, S. A.
Law -- England -- History
*If anyone does the deed of an outlaw, the king alone shall have power
to grant him security. He shall forfeit all his land to the king
without regard to whose vassal he is. Whoever feeds or harbours the
fugitive shall pay 5 pounds to the king, unless he clears himself by a
declaration that he did not know that he was a fugitive.
*He who promotes injustice or pronounces unjust judgments, as a result
of malice or bribery, shall forfeit 120s. to the king, in districts
under English law, unless he declares on oath that he did not know how
to give a more just verdict, and he shall lose forever his rank as a
thegn, unless he redeem it from the king, provided the latter is
willing to allow him to do so. In the Danelaw he shall forfeit his
lahslit.
*He who refuses to observe just laws and judgments shall forfeit, in
districts under English law, a fine to the party entitled thereto -
either 120s. to the king, 60s. to the earl, or 30s. to the hundred, or
to all of them if they were all concerned.
*If a man seeks to accuse another man falsely in such a way as to
injure him in property or in reputation, and if the latter can refute
the accusation brought against him, the first shall forfeit his tongue,
unless he redeems himself with his wergeld.
No one shall appeal to the king, unless he fails to obtain justice
within his hundred. Everyone shall attend the hundred court, under pain
of fine, whenever he is required by law to attend it.
The borough court shall be held at least three times and the shire
court at least twice, under pain of fine. The bishop of the diocese and
the earldorman shall attend and they shall direct the administration of
both ecclesiastical and secular law.
*No one shall make distraint [seizure of personal property out of the
possession of an alleged wrongdoer into the custody of the party
injured, to procure a satisfaction for a wrong committed] of property
either within the shire or outside it, until he has appealed for
justice three times in the hundred court. If on the third occasion he
does not obtain justice, he shall go on the fourth occasion to the
shire court, and the shire court shall appoint a day when he shall
issue his summons for the fourth time. And if this summons fails, he
shall get leave from the one court or the other, to take his own
measures for the recovery of his property.
*Every freeman over age 12 must be in a tithing if he desires to have
the right of exculpation and of being atoned for by the payment of his
wergeld, if he is slain, and to be entitled to the rights of a freeman,
whether he has an establishment of his own or is in the service of
another. Everyone shall be brought within a hundred and under surety,
and his surety shall hold and bring him to the performance of every
legal duty.
*Everyone over age 12 shall take an oath that he will not be a thief or
a thief's accomplice.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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