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
Gif hit þonne bið Wilisc onstal ne bið se að na þe mara.
But if it be a Wilisc charge, the oath shall not be the increased
oath.
This clause does not tell us whether the Wilisc man was considered to be
oath-worthy or not. Probably he would not be as against a Saxon. It only
states that when the charge of theft was made by an Englishman the oath
was to be one of twice as many hides as would be required to deny the
charge of a Wilisc man.
[Sidenote: In the ‘Ordinance of the Dun-setas’ strangers have only
half-wergelds and must go to the ordeal as not oath-worthy.]
Corroborative evidence as regards the half-wergelds and oath-worthiness
of the wealh class may be found in an ordinance of later date, but
belonging to Wessex, and it may be quoted as throwing strong light upon
the position of the Wilisc or wealh class (_wealþeode_) in apparently a
border district, where Saxons and wealhs met together with a boundary
of a river between them. It is entitled an ‘Ordinance respecting the
Dun-setas.’[253]
The leading fact throughout this document is that the two peoples met
avowedly as strangers. Its aim was to keep the peace and to protect the
owners of cattle on each side of the stream from the raids of their
neighbours on the other.
They are recognised as strangers to each other and on principle treated
reciprocally as such. Denial of a charge by oath and oath-helpers, unless
by special agreement, is assumed to be of no use and evidently out of
place between strangers in blood. Consequently the ordeal was the only
answer to a charge of theft.
Ne stent nan oðer lád æt tihtlan bute ordal betweox Wealan &
Englan, bute man þafian wille.
There stands no other purgation in an accusation save the ordeal
between Wealas and English unless it be allowed.
This was fully in accordance with tribal custom no less than the further
fact that their wergelds were, obviously for the same reason, to be
half-wergelds.
Gyf Wealh Engliscne man ofsleane þearf he hine hiden-ofer buton
be healfan were gyldan ne Ænglisc Wyliscne geon-ofer þe ma sy he
þegen-boren sy he ceorl-boren healf wer þær æt-fealð.
If a Wealh slay an Englishman he need not pay for him on this
side except with half his wer, no more than the Englishman for a
Wylisc on that side, be he thane-born, be he ceorl-born, one half
of the wer in that case falls away.
[Sidenote: These wylisc men were in Wessex.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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