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Anglo-Saxon Barbarism versus English

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Civilization."

SOME years ago, Cardinal Wiseman, writing on the subject,

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"Sense versus Science," complained that while the clumsy aqueducts of Rome, Caserta, Cordova, and other places, in spite of the ignorance of hydrostatics displayed in their structure, secured to rich and poor alike an abundant supply of pure water, our scientific arrangements, supposed to be so infinitely superior, could give to the poor nothing but a vile beverage filtered through graveyards, and tanked in impure reservoirs. Might not our system of action in many other matters be with equal justice complained of? Might not serious faults be charged against that 'civilization" which fails in countless cases to insure bread to men able and willing to earn it, which denies justice to the man who, empty-handed, implores it, and which leaves it possible, nay easy, for men to live by the breach of its laws, while by its more than barbarous indifference it permits them to perish in the observance? We are of opinion that they might. Not to go so far back as the days of ancient Rome or Caserta, we believe it will be found that there are points in which we are actually behind our primitive fathers, of whom we are in the habit of assuming that we are so greatly in advance. Should this appear to be saying too much, let us draw the attention of the reader to certain well-ascertained facts, and then ask how far we have overstated the case.

To commence with a matter of the greatest importance in every age, we will devote a few words to the system of jurisprudence which our Anglo-Saxon fathers adopted. The administration of justice was by several courts of law: those held by the thanes in their own halls, and hence termed hall-motes; those of the ealdormen, with the principal ecclesiastics and freeholders, held every month, and called the hundred-motes, their authority. extending over a large district called a hundred; and the shiremotes, or county-courts, held twice a year, and presided over by the bishop and ealdormen, their assessors being the sheriff and the noblest of the royal thanes. Laws enacted in the great National

Council were on these occasions recited. Appeals were allowed from the local hall and hundred-courts to the authority of the King, first magistrate by his office. The Witenagemote, or assembly of wise men, met thrice a year-at Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide.

It will be necessary, before going further, to give some account of the distinctions of rank in society, which were not many or very complicated. First were the members of the reigning family, who were termed Athelings, and claimed descent from the conqueror Woden-who, it must be remembered, had been deified, and was worshipped by the Scandinavian races as the God of War. The veneration in which they came thus to be held by their Pagan followers was not dissipated by the introduction of Christianity, the effect continuing after the cause had ceased to operate. The order next in rank was that of the ealdormen or earls. They were the governors of shires, which were not, however, originally as large as our counties. It was the duty of each of these functionaries to lead the men of his shire to battle, enforce the execution of justice, and preside with the bishop in the shire-court. His remuneration was one-third of the fines and rents paid to the King in the district over which his jurisdiction extended. Between this rank and that of the thanes were the comites, as Bede terms them, who acted as personal attendants to the King. Of the thanes there were two classes—the King's thanes and the thanes of ealdormen and prelates. They were men of consequence, frequently governors of districts, and possessed of some power. The lowest classes of freemen were the eorles and ceorles (churls), of noble and ignoble descent. The "full-born" Saxon attached much importance to this distinction, and was accustomed greatly to look down upon his "less-born" countryman. Of the ceorles there were two classes, those who could rent land from any lord they pleased, and those who were attached to the land and could not leave the estate upon which they had been born. The former worked for their lords only in seed-time and harvest, and in those times only for a certain number of days, in return for which, or sometimes for rent in money and kind, they received lands at the hands of their chiefs; they could, moreover, possess land by charter, which was called boc-land (boc, book or charter), and upon becoming possessed of five hides of which they were elevated to the rank of thanes. (A hide of land was as much as could be tilled with a single plough.) The ceorles in towns enjoyed greater privileges than those in the country, having, too, more opportunities of acquiring wealth. They gradually improved their condition, till at length they formed a regular body politic, associating in guilds, having a common market and hanse-house (guild-hall) and being bound by common rights and interests. Many London and Winchester ceorles rose to the rank of thanes,-commerce, as well as the possession of a certain amount of land by charter, being a path to distinction, and a merchant becoming a thane by virtue of having sailed thrice to a foreign land with a cargo of his own. The inferior class of ceorles were less fortunate. They had to perform services during three days a week, in addition to those which the free ceorles were required to render; the Christmas holidays, with

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the octaves of Easter and Pentecost, being the only exceptions. The poorest among them, the cottars and bordars, having but small holdings, only performed trifling services in return. "bondes" were a class yet a little lower, but not slaves, being sometimes summoned to sit on juries. The condition of slaveswhose numbers were kept up by prisoners of war, and those who had been reduced to slavery as a punishment for crime-was painful enough. They were, however, allowed to acquire property, and having done so could purchase their freedom; besides which, in consequence of the exhortations of the clergy, many were voluntarily released from their bondage.

Between lord and vassal there seems generally to have been a good understanding. The tie which bound them, consisting of mutual agreements, was regarded as the most sacred which nature or custom could impose, and there are cases of very generous devotion on the part of vassals to their chiefs. So binding was the engagement between them held to be that even when a lord called upon his vassals to bear arms against the King, they rarely failed to do his behest.

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Any inquiry into the social relations of the Anglo-Saxons must necessarily centre a good deal around the person of Alfred the Great. "During the long period of Danish devastation," writes Lingard, "the fabric of civil government had been nearly dissolved. The courts of judicature had been closed; injuries were inflicted without provocation, and retaliated without mercy; and the Saxon, like the Dane, had imbibed a spirit of insubordination and a contempt for peace, and justice, and religion. To remedy these evils Alfred restored, enlarged, and improved the salutary institutions of his forefathers; and from the statutes of Ethelbert, Ina, Offa, and other Saxon princes composed a code of laws suited to the circumstances of the time and the habits of his subjects." From the same author we learn that when Alfred's subjects had recourse to his equity for protection against injustice he "listened as cheerfully to the complaints of the lowest as of the highest" among them. Every appeal was heard by him with the most patient attention, and in cases of importance he revised the proceedings at his leisure, and the inferior magistrates trembled at the impartiality and severity of their sovereign. Neither birth, nor friends, nor power could save the corrupt or malicious judge.' The poor and defenceless were ever the particular charge of this exemplary sovereign. No trouble, no time, no self-denial was in his judgment too great if the arbitrement of their cause seemed to demand it; and as he thus earnestly sought after their welfare, so was he zealously severe upon those who strove to crush them. No fewer than forty-four judges were executed during his reign for having unjustly condemned to death those upon whom they had sat in judgment. Nor did the blunders of culpable carelessness or gross ignorance escape their proportionate punishment. And Alfred's severity was not misplaced. He regarded his subjects as his fellow-men, his brethren,-not inferior animals, as many who have far less cause for pride than had Alfred are now accustomed to regard the outcast and miserable poor;-and he would no more have those brethren unjustly imprisoned or put to death than he

would have had them suffer the ills which were reserved for their descendants-to perish of starvation, or walk for hundreds of miles in search of employment, or die of pestilent fevers from being huddled together in foul_dens, choked with the stench of drains and decaying refuse. It remained for civilization to effect this condition of things; and it remained for nineteenth century humanity, cloud-piercing, superstition-freed philosophy, and matchless legislative wisdom to say that it was very shocking, but it could not be helped these dreadful creatures were perishing of their own accord, and it was quite impossible to lift them out of the slime and filth into which they had fallen.

But to leave this blissful civilisation, which some infamous wretches-some revolutionary scoundrels-are daring to faulty, and turn once more to the days of barbarism. "No sovereign," says Sharon Turner, "ever shaped his conduct with more regard to the public happiness than Alfred. He seems to

have considered his life but as a trust to be used for the benefit of his people," (would that modern sovereigns so considered theirs!) "and his plans for their welfare were intelligent and great. His predominant wish was their knowledge and improvement. This is no speculation of a modern fancy, it is his own assertion in his most deliberate moments. His letter to his bishop breathes this principle throughout. To communicate to others the knowledge that we possess he ever states to be a religious duty." The idea of enforcing mental culture is so far from being new that in Alfred's time earls, governors, and ministers of state, many of whom had previously been unable to read or write, were compelled either to learn to do so or resign their offices; masters were provided for high and low, many of both classes being educated with the king's own son such little progress had these unhappy barbarians made in that nice perception of propriety which in our day would make the lisping fop who had got into his otherwise empty head the impression that he was a superior being, instinctively start back at the idea of coming into contact with beastly common people!

In his system of police Alfred provided-bringing into working order, if he did not devise—a system by which criminal offences should be almost inevitably detected and punished. Every hundred or tenth (that is, every district containing a hundred or ten families associated together, something after the manner of the curia and decuria in the primitive constitution of the Romans) being held responsible for the conduct of its inhabitants, a criminal was certain to be apprehended if he remained within his own district, and if he went to another he would be regarded as an outlaw, being unpledged by the tithing or hundred to which he had fled. Alfred made it his business, also, to facilitate to his subjects the means of obtaining justice. "Every complainant," again quoting Sharon Turner, "might, on application, have a commission or writ to his sheriff or lord, or to appointed judges, who were to investigate his wrong." This sovereign "hastened the decision of causes. No adjournment or delay was allowed for above fifteen days."

Offences were generally atoned for among the Anglo-Saxons by

pecuniary compensation, only the worst crimes being regarded as botelos," or inexpiable; while the value of a man's oath was according to his position in society! We said advisedly barbarism! Barbarism indeed! But are not these merely points wherein our fathers were as barbarous as we are, not wherein they were more so ? Are not the most shameful offences-even those which our forefathers would have regarded as inexpiable—often now atoned for by pecuniary means? Are not the punishments due to the worst of crimes often evaded by men whose only virtue lies in their purse, and who can buy immunity-by employing men whose very profession it is to shield the head of guilt, if but the hand, though imbued with blood, is filled with all-cleansing gold? And are not the oaths of men made valuable or worthless according to their position in society, by the insolent bullying of some unscrupulous sophist who calls himself a man of the law-bullying which he only dares use towards a witness whose position in society leaves him no defence against insult? We know they are! All of us know it, though some of us are fond of trying to persuade ourselves and others that it is not so-all of us know that our whole system of jurisprudence is wrong, unjust, iniquitous! Those of us who call ourselves Christians know that it is so, and do not stir or lift up our voices to alter it; those of us who call ourselves rationalists, and profess to be guided by feelings of humanity and natural religion, know that it is so, and do not so much as move a finger to prevent it-to prevent what is contrary to all religion, to all truth, to all justice.

But to return yet again to primitive barbarism. An institution entirely without a redeeming point was the trial by ordeal, fully as irrational and senseless as the somewhat later witch-trial by "swimming." A great check to false swearing existed in the practice of requiring seven freemen bearing so high a character that all present acknowledged them as 'true men," to take oaths supporting that of the plaintiff to the effect that he was not influenced by envy or animosity in bringing the charge. Another custom very beneficial in its effects was that of pronouncing sentence of outlawry against certain classes of criminals. Such, for example, would constitute the punishment of any one convicted of keeping a house of ill-fame. The criminal so banished was said to bear a wolf's head, and in the event of his returning and attempting to act in his own defence it was lawful for anyone to slay him. The condition of the poor among the Anglo-Saxons was certainly more tolerable than it is in any country now. The great distinction between poverty at that time and poverty at this was that then only old and infirm people could be, in the sternest sense of the word, poor, and it was therefore a comparatively easy task to see that they did not want; whereas now, those (by hundreds and thousands) who are young, active, and able-bodied may, either from being unable to get employment, or being ill-paid when it is got, be cruelly, grindingly, piteously poor. That, too, which in our day hinders the poor from being helped as they otherwise would be -the prevalence of imposture was among the Anglo-Saxons rendered altogether impossible by the law of settlement. man," says Kemble, "had a legal existence unless he could be

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