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This short abstract contains the history of the criminal jurisprudence of the northern nations for several centuries. The state of England in this particular, during the period of the Anglo-Saxons, may be judged of by the collection of ancient laws, published by Lambard and Wilkins. The chief purport of these laws is not to prevent or entirely suppress private quarrels, which the legislators knew to be impossible, but only to regulate and moderate them. The laws of Alfred enjoin, that if any one know that his enemy or aggressor, after doing him an injury, resolves to keep within his own house and 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 without attacking him; and if the aggressor be a 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 content with the compensation.” If the criminal fly to the temple, that sanctuary must not be violated. Where the assailant has not force sufficient to besiege the criminal in his house, he must apply to the alderman for assistance; and if the alderman refuse aid the assailant must have recourse to the king; and he is not allowed to assault the house till after this supreme magistrate has refused assistance. If any one meet with his enemy, and be ignorant that he was resolved to keep within his own lands he must, before he attack him, require him to surrender him self prisoner, and deliver up his arms; in which case he may detain him thirty days; but if he refuse to deliver up his arms it is then lawful to fight him. A slave may fight in his master’s quarrel: a father may fight in his son’s with any one except with his master.[**]

It was enacted by King Ina, that no man should take revenge for an injury till he had first demanded compensation, and had been refused it.[***]

     [* The addition of these last words is Italics
     appears necessary from what follows in the same law.]

     [** IL. lf. sect. 28. Wilkins, p. 43.]

     [*** LL. Inae sect. 9]

King Edmond, in the preamble to his laws, mentions the general misery occasioned by the multiplicity of private feuds and battles; and he establishes several expedients for remedying this grievance. He ordains that if any one commit murder, he may, with the assistance of his kindred, pay within a twelvemonth the fine of his crime; and if they abandon him, he shall alone sustain the deadly feud or quarrel with the kindred of the murdered person: his own kindred are free from the feud, but on condition that they neither converse with the criminal, nor supply him with meat or other necessaries: if any of them, after renouncing him, receive him into their house, or give him assistance, they are finable to the king, and are involved in the feud. If the kindred of the murdered person take revenge on any but the criminal himself, after he is abandoned by his kindred, all their property is forfeited, and they are declared to be enemies to the king and all his friends.[*] It is also ordained that the fine for murder shall never be remitted by the king,[**] and that no criminal shall be killed who flies to the church, or any of the king’s towns;[***] and the king himself declares, that his house shall give no protection to murderers, till they have satisfied the church by their penance, and the kindred of the deceased by making compensation.[****] The method appointed for transacting this composition is found in the same law.[*****]

These attempts of Edmond, to contract and diminish the feuds, were contrary to the ancient spirit of the northern barbarians, and were a step towards a more regular administration of justice. By the salic law, any man-night, by a public declaration, exempt himself from his family quarrels: but then he was considered by the law as no longer belonging to the family; and he was deprived of all right of succession, as the punishment of his cowardice.[******]

The price of the king’s head, or his weregild, as it was then called, was by law thirty thousand thrimsas, near thirteen hundred pounds of present money. The price of the prince’s head was fifteen thousand thrimsas; that of a bishop’s or alderman’s, eight thousand; a sheriff’s, four thousand; a thane’s or clergyman’s, two thousand; a ceorle’s, two hundred and sixty-six. These prices were fixed by the laws of the Angles. By the Mercian law, the price of a ceorle’s head was two hundred shillings; that of a thane’s, six times as much; that of a king’s, six times more.[*******] By the laws of Kent, the price of the archbishop’s head was higher than that of the king’s.[********] Such respect was then paid to the ecclesiastics! It must be understood, that where a person was unable or unwilling to pay the fine, he was put out of the protection of law, and the kindred of the deceased had liberty to punish him as they thought proper.

Some antiquaries [*********] have thought that these compensations were only given for manslaughter, not for wilful murder.

     [* LL. Edm. sect,. 1. Wilkins, p. 73.]

     [** LL. Edm. sect. 3.]

     [*** LL. Edm. sect. 2.]

     [**** LL. Edm. sect. 4.]

     [****** Tit. 63.]

     [******* Wilkins, p. 71, 72]

     [******** LL. Elthredi, apud Wilkins, p. 110.]

     [********* Tyrrel, Introduct. vol. i. p. 120. Carte vol i.
     p. 366.]

But no such distinction appears in the laws; and it is contradicted by the practice of all the other barbarous nations,[*] by that of the ancient Germans,[**] and by that curious monument above mentioned of Saxon antiquity, preserved by Hickes. There is indeed a law of Alfred’s which makes wilful murder capital;[***] but this seems only to have been an attempt of that great legislator towards establishing a better police in the kingdom, and it probably remained without execution. By the laws of the same prince, a conspiracy against the life of the king might be redeemed by a fine.[****]

The price of all kinds of wounds was likewise fixed by the Saxon laws: a wound of an inch long under the hair was paid with one shilling: one of a like size in the face, two shillings; thirty shillings for the loss of an ear; and so forth.[*****] There seems not to have been any difference made, according to the dignity of the person. By the laws of Ethelbert, any one who committed adultery with his neighbor’s wife was obliged to pay him a fine, and buy him another wife.[******]

These institutions are not peculiar to the ancient Germans. They seem to be the necessary progress of criminal jurisprudence among every free people, where the will of the sovereign is not implicitly obeyed. We find them among the ancient Greeks during the time of the Trojan war. Compositions for murder are mentioned in Nestor’s speech to Achilles, in the ninth Iliad, and are called [Greek: apoinai]. The Irish, who never had any connections with the German nations, adopted the same practice till very lately; and the price of a man’s head was called among them his “eric;” as we learn from Sir John Davis. The same custom seems also to have prevailed among the Jews.[*******]