Tribal Custom in Anglo-Saxon Law: Being an Essay Supplemental to (1) 'The English Village Community', (2) 'The Tribal System in Wales'Seebohm, Frederic
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Tribal Custom in Anglo-Saxon Law: Being an Essay Supplemental to (1) 'The English Village Community', (2) 'The Tribal System in Wales'
Seebohm, Frederic
Anglo-Saxons; Law, Anglo-Saxon; Law, Medieval; Tribes -- Great Britain
Now what are we to make of these ‘Fragmenta’? Clearly the two fragments
must be taken separately, for in the first the payment ‘for the life of
a man’ is 180 cows and in the second the payment ‘for a man’s life’ is
twelve marks.
Mr. Robertson seems to have concluded that the payment of 180 cows was
the wergeld according to the Assize of Scotland, or, as he puts it, ‘the
manbote for homicide throughout Scotia.’[200] But he arrived at this
conclusion apparently by connecting this fragment with the clause already
quoted in the Assize of King David which states that a person killing
another in any place within the king’s peace ‘shall pay to the king 180
cows and a colpindach.’ He concluded that the payment was 180 cows from
the reading ‘ixˣˣ cows,’ as it is found in the Ayr manuscript of one of
the clauses, as already stated. But the clause itself shows that this
payment to the king was not the wergeld, because after making this
payment the slayer had still to ‘assyth to the kin of him slain after the
assyse of the land.’
Nor does it seem any more likely that the payment of twelve marks
mentioned in the second fragment was the wergeld of Scottish custom.
From its amount it seems much more likely to correspond with the payment
already alluded to as the ‘wergeld’ of the thief allowed to escape,
which, however, might possibly represent that of persons of lowest rank.
The evidence of these undated fragments leaves us in the dark as to what
the wergeld of the ancient Assize of Scotland may have been. Confused and
mixed statements as to the wergelds are not surprising when the mixture
of races is taken into account, and, after all, the phrase ‘after the
assize of the land’ or ‘after the assize of the Kynrik’ may refer only to
those portions of the kingdom to which the laws of King David specially
applied.
II. THE ‘REGIAM MAJESTATEM.’
Further traces of tribal custom are mentioned in the treatise entitled
‘Regiam majestatem’[201] apart from the remarkable addition to it, which
also appears again as a separate document, under the heading ‘Leges inter
Brettos et Scotos.’
[Sidenote: Scotch version of Glanville.]
The ‘Regiam Majestatem’ itself may be regarded as a version of
Glanville’s well-known treatise on English law, applied with alterations
and adaptations to Scotland by a Scotch writer conversant with local
custom, and probably dating between A.D. 1200 and 1230.[202]
As in the laws of King David and his successors, so in the body of this
treatise, references to ancient usages occur with occasional survivals of
untranslated Gaelic words which seem to refer them back to Celtic tribal
custom.
[Sidenote: Celtic survivals here and there.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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