Our Legal Heritage: The First Thousand Years: 600 - 1600: King Aethelbert - Queen ElizabethReilly, S. A.
History
Our Legal Heritage: The First Thousand Years: 600 - 1600: King Aethelbert - Queen Elizabeth
Reilly, S. A.
Law -- England -- History
In the peaceful latter part of the 600s, Theodore, who had been a
monk in Rome, was appointed Archbishop and visited all the
island speaking about the right rule of life and ordaining
bishops to oversee the priests. There was a bishop for each of
the kingdoms. The bishops came to have the same wergeld as an
eorldorman: 1200 s., which was the price of about 500 oxen. A
priest had the wergeld as a landholding farmer [thegn], or 300s.
The bishops spoke Latin, but the priests of the local parishes
spoke English. Theodore was the first archbishop whom all the
English church obeyed. He taught sacred and secular literature,
the books of holy writ, ecclesiastical poetry, astronomy,
arithmetic, and sacred music. The learned ecclesiastical life
flourished in monasteries. Theodore discouraged slavery by
denying Christian burial to the kidnapper and forbidding the
sale of children over the age of seven. Hilda, a noble's
daughter, became the first nun in Northumbria and abbess of one
of its monasteries. There she taught justice, piety, chastity,
peace, and charity. Several monks taught there later became
bishops. Kings and princes often asked her advice.
There were several kingdoms. Kings were selected from the royal
family by their worthiness. A King had not only a wergeld to be
paid to his family if he were killed, but a "cynebot" that would
be paid to his kingdom. A King's household would have a
chamberlain, marshall to oversee the horses and military
equipment, a steward, and a cupbearer. A queen could possess,
manage, and dispose of lands in her name. Great men wore
gold-embroidered clothes, gilt buckles and brooches, and drank
from drinking horns mounted in silver-gilt or in gold. Their
wives had beads, pins, needles, tweezers of bronze, and
work-boxes of bronze, some highly ornamented.
Danish Vikings made several invasions in the 800s for which a
danegeld tax on land was assessed on everyone every ten to
twenty years. It was stored in a strong box under the King's
bed. King Alfred the Great unified the country to defeat them.
He established fortifications called "burhs", usually on hill
tops or other strategic locations on the borders to control the
main road and river routes into Wessex. The burhs were the first
towns. They were typically walled enclosures with towers and
several wooden thatched huts and a couple of churches inside.
Earthen oil lamps were in use. The land area protected by each
burh became known as a "shire". The country was inhabited by
Anglo-Saxons and was called "Angle-land", which later became
"England".
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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