By Anglo-Saxon law, all property above a certain value was to be bought in open market, and in the presence of _Witnesses_, who were always men of property and good repute--the Reeve, the Landlord, the Priest, or other “unlying men” of similar station, who were chosen for this and other purposes in every _Burh_ and Hundred. No sale was legal without a _Warranter_, who guaranteed that the property offered for sale was honestly acquired; and if it was subsequently claimed within a certain period as stolen goods, the purchaser was bound to produce his witnesses and the warranter, the responsibility from that time resting upon the latter. If he failed to appear the purchase was void, though the oaths of the witnesses cleared the purchaser from the legal consequences of theft; but if neither witnesses nor warranter came forward in his behalf, he was at once condemned as a thief. The name of the warranter was _Getyma_, whilst the legal process, which was always numbered amongst the privileges of the Baron’s Court at this period, was known as _Team_, and was a part of that system which aimed at supplanting the rude personal independence which answered every accusation by an appeal to the sword.[291] The equivalent of the _Getyma_ amongst the Welsh was known as the _Mach_, and he seems to be traceable in the Salic law under the name of _Hamallus_, the prototype apparently of the Norman _Heimil-borch_, or _Hemold-borh_--perhaps even of the Anglo-Saxon _Getyma_--the similarity of the title by which the warranter was known beyond the Tweed, or rather perhaps beyond the Forth, _Hamehald_, pointing to the quarter from which the regulations of the _Team_ would appear to have been introduced, at any rate beyond the “Scots-water.”[292] In pursuance of this system, of which the germs are earliest found in force amongst the Franks, David appointed certain places in every Scottish sheriffdom to which all property “challenged for theft” was to be brought, and all the warranters in such cases were to be summoned. Scone, Cluny, Logierait and Dalginch were the places named for Gowrie, Stormont, Atholl, and Fife; Kintulloch for Strathearn; Forfar and Dunottar for Angus and the Mearns; and Aberdeen for Mar and Buchan. Inverness was named for Ross and Moray, whilst Stirling was the place appointed for transactions in which “the men beyond the Forth” were implicated; for though in modern times this description would apply to the northern Scots, when Scone was the capital and Gowrie the heart of the kingdom, “all beyond the Scots-water” meant the inhabitants of the Lothians, Cumbria, and Galloway. Just as amongst the Franks forty days were allowed the accused to collect his evidence within Ardennes and the Loire, eighty if the parties required dwelt beyond these limits;--the time varying amongst the Anglo-Saxons from one week to four, according to the distance of the shire from which the evidence was summoned, six weeks and a day being allowed for all “beyond