Anglo-Saxon Law - Statistical Analysis

Statistical Analysis

Matters which seem to us primary are almost entirely absent in Anglo-Saxon laws or relegated to the background. A survey is rendered almost impossible by the arbitrary manner in which paragraphs are divided, by the difficulty of making Old English enactments fit into modern rubrics, and by the necessity of multiple counting; but here is brief statistical analysis of the contents of royal codes and laws. There are roughly 419 paragraphs devoted to criminal law and procedure as against 91 concerned with questions of private law and civil procedure. Of the criminal law clauses, as many as 238 are taken up with tariffs of fines, while 80 treat of capital and corporal punishment, outlawry and confiscation, and 101 include rules of procedure. On the private law side 18 clauses apply to rights of property and possession, 13 to succession and family law, 37 to contracts, including marriage when treated as an act of sale; 18 touch on civil procedure. The law of status had no less than 107 paragraphs, dictated by the wish to discriminate between the classes of society. Questions of public law and administration are discussed in 217 clauses, while 197 concern the Church in one way or another, apart from purely ecclesiastical collections. In the public law division it is chiefly the power, interests and privileges of the king that are dealt with, in roughly 93 paragraphs, while local administration comes in for 39 and purely economic and fiscal matter for 13 clauses.. Police regulations are very much to the fore and occupy no less than 72 clauses of the royal legislation. As to church matters, the most prolific group is formed by general precepts based on religious and moral considerations, roughly 115, while secular privileges conferred on the Church hold about 62, and questions of organization some 20 clauses.

The statistical contrasts are especially sharp and characteristic when we take into account the chronological sequence in the elaboration of laws. Practically the entire code of Æthelberht, for instance, is a tariff of fines for crimes, and the same subject continues to occupy a great place in the laws of Hlothhere and Eadric, Ine and Alfred, whereas it appears only occasionally in the treaties with the Danes, the laws of Withraed, Edward the Elder, Æthelstan, Edgar, Edmund I and Æthelred. It reappears in some strength in the code of Cnut, but the latter is chiefly a recapitulation of former enactments. The system of "compositions" or fines, paid in many cases with the help of kinsmen, finds its natural place in the ancient, tribal period of English history and loses its vitality later on in consequence of the growth of central power and of the scattering of maegths. Royalty and the Church, when they acquire the lead in social life, work out a new penal system based on outlawry, death penalties and corporal punishments, which make their first appearance in the legislation of Withraed and culminate in that of Æthelred and Cnut.

As regards status, the most elaborate enactments fall into the period preceding the Danish settlements. After the treaties with the Danes, the tendency is to simplify distinctions on the lines of an opposition between twelvehynd-men and twyhynd-men, paving the way towards the feudal distinction between the free and the unfree. In the arrangements of the commonwealth the clauses treating of royal privileges are more or less evenly distributed over all reigns, but the systematic development of police functions, especially in regard to responsibility for crimes, the catching of thieves, the suppression of lawlessness, is mainly the object of 10th and 11th century legislation. The reign of Æthelred, which witnessed the greatest national humiliation and the greatest crime in English history, is also marked by the most lavish expressions of religious feeling and the most frequent appeals to morality. This sketch would, of course, have to be modified in many ways if we attempted to treat the unofficial fragments of customary law in the same way as the paragraphs of royal codes, and even more so if we were able to tabulate the indirect evidence as to legal rules. But, imperfect as such statistics may be, they give us at any rate some insight into the direction of governmental legislation.