Clearly, then, from the nature of early Saxon society, elaborate penal machinery had no place. The freemen atoned for their transgressions with fines when possible, and by slavery, mutilation, outlawry, or death when they could not pay. Cruelly as the slaves might be flogged or slaughtered, there were no prisons in the land even for them.[66] The villages were mere groups of wooden homesteads with barns and cattle sheds surrounded by rough stockades and destitute of roads or communications. Even the palace of the king was a long wooden hall with numerous outhouses, for the English built no stone houses and burnt down those of their Roman predecessors.[67] The Teutons, according to Tacitus, abhorred walled towns as the defences of slavery and the graves of freedom. The Frisians forbade the construction of any walls more than 12 feet high.[68] In the course of time the crown, or central government, grew in power; the king, and even the great lords, spiritual and temporal, were able to enforce obedience and order, at any rate upon those in their neighbourhood.[69] The royal authority could defy the vendetta, and from very early times had claimed a share in the compensation,[70] so that, along with the wer-gild, payable to the injured party, the wite, or additional fine, had to be paid to the sovereign (or overlord) for the disturbance of his peace.[71] Sometimes he would take vengeance for the State or for an aggrieved person.[72] Thus in the reign of Æthelstan a man might forfeit his hand for coining, and have it nailed over the door of the mint;[73] and in the reign of Cnut a woman might lose her nose and ears if she committed adultery. In the early period these mutilations appear to have often been intended to be mortal, for in the laws of Alfred and Guthrum we read that “If a malefactor, having forfeited himself, has had a limb cut off, and, being left to himself, survive the third night; afterwards he that is willing to take care of his sore and soul may help him with the Bishop’s leave.”[74] But the maimed criminals were also allowed at large to be a living warning to others. That the Saxons could be cruel enough when bōt was not made, and to habitual criminals and slaves, we have seen already; how barbarous the amputations were may be gleaned from the words of our Danish monarch: “... At the second time let there be no other bōt if he be foul” (at the ordeal) “than that his hands be cut off or his feet, or both according as the deed may be, and if then he have wrought yet greater wrong, then let his eyes be put out, or his nose and his ears and the upper lip be cut off; or let him be scalped ... so that punishment be inflicted and also the soul preserved.”[75]