It is to be presumed that the Anglo-Saxons imported into England the laws and customs prevailing in their own country. The rules they made against adultery were frightfully severe. When a couple were detected in the commission of the offense, the woman was compelled to commit suicide, to avoid the greater tortures awaiting her if she refused. Her body was then placed on a pile of brushwood and consumed. Nor did her partner in guilt escape punishment; he was usually put to death on the spot where her ashes lay collected. These penalties would appear to be sufficiently severe, but in some instances worse were inflicted. Where the case was one of peculiar aggravation, the adulteress was hunted down by a number of infuriate demireps of her own sex, each armed with a club, a knife, or some other formidable weapon, and stabbed or beaten to death. If one party of her pursuers became weary of the sport, another took their places until the victim expired beneath the blows. These extremely rigid ideas of the Anglo-Saxons do not seem to have been consistent, for while adultery was punished in the severe manner described, incest was not only permitted, but commonly practiced; and it was even the custom for relations to marry within the closest degrees of consanguinity. But they were not long located in England before the more savage traits of their character were softened down, and the women soon found amusement more suitable to their sex than that of chasing their erring sisters as quarry. The marriage ceremonies also assumed a more refined and decent character, although the wife continued to be regularly purchased by her husband, and the contract was still considered a mere matter of bargain and sale. By the laws of Ethelbert marriageable women were made commodities of barter, and enactments of this character are to be found in existence long subsequent to his reign. As the Anglo-Saxons were a hardy, vigorous race, and existed chiefly by hunting, fishing, and a rude and imperfect system of agriculture, it is not probable that prostitution existed among them to any great extent. The fatigues of the chase and field exhausted the energy of the body, and diminished the desire and capacity for sexual indulgence, and, living in small detached communities as they did, they knew nothing of the stimulating incentives of city life. Yet that prostitutes existed, and lived by the wages of their profession, is proved by the fact that women (who were entitled by law to hold and dispose of property) bequeathed their wealth to their daughters, with the occasional stipulation that they should live chaste lives in the event of their remaining single, and not earn money by prostituting their persons.