"Tho were his bonde-men sory and nothing glad, When Gamelyn her lord wolues heed was cried and maad; And sente out of his men, wher they might him fynde, For to seke Gamelyn vnder woode-lynde, To telle him tydinges, how the wynd was went, And al his good reued, and alle his men schent." The expression "wolf's head" was an old Saxon formula of outlawry, and appears to have originated from the circumstance that a price was set on the fugitive equivalent to that at which a wolf's head was estimated. One of the laws of Edward the Confessor deals with the case of a person who has fled justice, and pronounces: "Si postea repertus fuerit et teneri possit, vivus regi reddatur, vel caput ipsius si se defenderit; lupinum enim caput geret a die utlagacionis sue, quod ab Anglis _wlvesheved_ nominatur. Et hec sententia communis est de omnibus utlagis." Already we are in possession of the salient facts as regards outlawry. As a rule the outlaw was not banished, as citizens were ostracized at Athens, to secure the State from dangerous rivalries. In other words, they were commonly not men of character and distinction, but just the reverse--persons whose conduct was so destitute of honour as to degrade them, in the eyes of the community, to the level of the worst sort of vermin. And they were treated accordingly. They were held to be unfit to exist as an integral part of the body politic, and either destroyed or, as an alternative, constrained to abjure the realm. The head and front of their offence was not any act of which they might have been guilty. The direct, and, it may be said, the sole, cause of their proscription was refusal to submit to the laws, to accept justice at the hands of their country-men. This comes out quite distinctly in the legislative enactments of our remote ancestors. Kemble in his "Saxons in England" quotes the following law of King Edgar: "That a thief be pursued, if necessary. If there be present need, let it be told the hundred men, and let them afterwards make it known to the tithing men and let them all go forth whither God may direct them to their end; let them all do justice on the thief as it was formerly Eadmund's law. And be the _ceapgild_ (i.e., market value) paid to him that owns the chattel; and be the rest divided in two, half to the hundred, half to the lord except men; and let the lord take possession of the men. "And if any neglect this and deny the judgment of the hundred, and the same be afterwards proved against him, let him pay to the hundred 30 pence; and the second time 60 pence; half to the hundred, half to the lord. If he do it a third time, let him pay 1/2 lb; the 4th time let him lose all that he hath and be an outlaw, unless the King will allow him to remain in the land.... "We have also ordained that if the hundred pursue a track into another hundred, notice be given to the hundred elder, and that he go with them. If he fail to do so let him pay L30 to the King....