Prior to the Norman conquest we have no record of any duel or trial by battle, although the Anglo-Saxon laws were framed to prevent private quarrels and acts of vindictive violence. The law of Alfred enjoined, that if any one knows that his aggressor, after doing him an injury, is determined to keep within his own house, or on his own lands, he shall not fight him till he require compensation for the injury. If he be strong enough to besiege him in his house, he may do it for seven days; and, if the aggressor is willing during that time to surrender himself and his arms, his adversary may detain him thirty days, but is afterwards obliged to restore him safe to his kindred, and be contented with the _compensation_; but, if he refuses to deliver up his arms, it is then lawful to fight him. A slave might fight in his master’s quarrel; a father might fight in his son’s, with any one except with his master. King Edmund, moreover, in the preamble to his laws, alluded to the multiplicity of private feuds and battles, established various enactments to check the evil; and regulated certain compensations for the loss of life, without any distinction between murder and manslaughter: every head had its price, from the king’s, that was valued at 30,000 thrimsas, considered to be about 1,300_l._ to that of a ceorle, or husbandman, 266; in this tariff, an archbishop’s head was rated at a much higher value than a monarch’s. The price all wounds and injuries was also regulated: a wound of an inch long under the hair, one shilling; one of a like size in the face, two shillings; the loss of an ear, thirty shillings; and, according to the rare code of Ethelbert, any one who committed adultery with another man’s wife was obliged to buy him a new one. This commutation for crimes appears to have been universal in ancient times. Blackstone informs us that in Ireland, by the _Brehon_ laws, a murderer was obliged to give the surviving relatives of the slain a recompense, called Eviach. In Homer we have the same practice during the Trojan war; Nestor in his speech to Achilles thus addressing him:-- If a brother bleed, On just atonement we remit the deed: A sire the slaughter of his son forgives: The price of blood discharged, the murderer lives. And again, in the 18th book of the Iliad, in the description of Achilles’s shield:-- There in the Forum swarms a numerous train,-- The subject of debate, a townsman slain; One pleads the fine discharged, which one denied, And bade the public and the law decide. The most curious part of this law of compensation was the weighing the value of a witness:--a man whose life was worth one hundred and twenty shillings counterbalanced six labourers, the life of each being estimated at twenty shillings; his oath was therefore considered equivalent to that of all the six.