“Ut omnis homo teneat homines suos in fideiussione sua contra omne furtum. Si tunc sit aliquis qui tot homines habeat quod non sufficiat omnes custodire, praeponat sibi singulis villis praepositum unum, qui credibilis sit ei, et qui concredat hominibus. Et si praepositus alicui eorum hominum concredere non audeat, inveniat xii plegios cognationis suae qui ei stent in fideiussione.” Æðelst. ii. § 7. Thorpe, i. 217. ----- Eádmund permitted the mǽgð to avoid the consequences of their kinsman’s act, by refusing to abet him in his feud[492]. I imagine that this law must be taken in connection with that of Eádweard[493], and that it implies a total desertion of the criminal by his kindred, with all its consequences, viz. loss of liberty to him, and of his wergyld to them. The troubled time of Æðelred, “the ill-advised,” supplies another attempt to secure peace by holding the relatives strictly and personally responsible: in his law we find it enacted, “If breach of the peace be committed within a town, let the inhabitants of the town go in person, and take the murderers, alive or dead, or their nearest of kin, head for head. If they will not, let the ealdorman go; if he will not, let the king go; if he will not, let the whole district be in a state of war[494].” Though this perhaps is less a settled rule of law than the convulsive effort of an authority striving in vain to maintain itself amid civil discords and the horrors of foreign invasion, it still consecrates the old principle, and returns to the true basis on which Anglosaxon society was founded, namely treaties of peace and mutual guarantee between the several parties that made up the State. ----- Footnote 492: Eádm. ii. § 1. Footnote 493: Eádw. ii. § 9. Footnote 494: Æðelr. ii. § 6. Thorpe, i. 286. ----- Such were the means by which the internal peace of the land was attempted to be secured, and it is evident that better could hardly have been devised in a state of society where population was not very widely dispersed, and where property hardly existed, save in land, and almost equally unmanageable cattle. The summary jurisdiction of our police magistrates, our recognizances and bail and binding over to keep the peace, are developments rendered necessary by our altered circumstances; but these are nevertheless institutions of the same nature as those on which our forefathers relied. The establishment of our County-courts, in which justice goes forth from man to man, and without original writ from the Crown, is another step toward the ancient principle of our jurisprudence, in the old Hundred. A further inquiry now arises, as to the basis upon which all calculations as to satisfaction between man and man were founded; in other words to the system of Wergylds and its various corollaries: this will form the subject of a separate chapter. CHAPTER X. FǼHÐE. WERGYLD.