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, that is because it almost always was a man, but women too might have owned cattle and made use of the agreement.) The types of problem faced by the men who wrote the Dunsæte Agreement were not unusual in early medieval Britain,1 and neither were most of the solutions they decided upon.2 What sets the Dunsæte Agreement apart from other Anglo-Saxon law codes grappling with cattle theft is that the men who created this document, and the community that it concerns, included both Anglo-Saxons and Welsh. The text’s prologue states that ‘Þis is seo gerædnes, þe Angelcynnes
, ambassadors and naval officers; by the launch of the HMS King Alfred; and by the assembling in Winchester of the National Home Reading Union. Alfred was also hailed as the founder of these institutions in numerous Victorian texts and in works of art. And he was equally credited at different times during the nineteenth century with attempting to abolish slavery; with establishing the English law-code and trial by jury; and with forging a proto-union of the British Isles. Each of these notions can ultimately be traced to an over-reading or misreading of an Anglo-Saxon source
’s thought can be seen in the works he produces during this period, including the law-codes VII–X Æthelred, the first version of the Institutes of Polity , as well as such homilies as the Sermo ad Populum (Bethurum 13) and Wulfstan’s most famous work, the Sermo Lupi ad Anglos (Bethurum 20). These writings are characterised by a movement away from the general admonitions and eschatological
makes it impossible to assess the situation there, but some historians have heard the echo of Roman indirect taxation in later dues such as the charges levied on salt production. 20 The late appearance and long formative stage of kingdoms in England would, however, argue against the survival of widespread taxation from the late Roman period, but the fact that the Tribal Hidage appears to list tributes suggests that the raising of tribute was part and parcel of state formation. A law code from Wessex in the 690s ( The Laws of King Ine) talks of food rents, that is
-Saxon law-codes, supplemented by the Modus tenendi parliamentum, which offered most of the fuel for the argument on the antiquity of parliament. In their search for precedents, MPs turned to the rolls of parliament and the Year Books. In a discussion on free speech in 1571, Fleetwood noted that he thought that ‘what he had learned in the parliament rolles’ was ‘convenient the knowledge and consideracion’. His contribution to the debate on 28 May 1572 as to how they should respond to Elizabeth’s message closing off further discussions about executing Mary, queen of Scots
, ius civis , which governed the lives and regulations of citizens. These were the customs, statutes, and forms of procedure that were meant to protect property, lives, and reputation of citizens, and to give satisfaction to victims of injustice. Roman law was originally oral only; you were at the mercy of the law courts to read and interpret the law fairly in your favour. In the fifth century BCE , however, the plebeians insisted on more rights as there was no written law code, and they were aware that court decisions and penalties were weighted in favour of the
. Corresponding developments in Byzantine territory are harder to discern. Law codes selectively reprise the Augustan lex Iulia de vi publica prohibiting private citizens from carrying weapons in public, though exceptional circumstances and legal ambivalence periodically militated enforcement of penalties. 15 Justinianic legislation prohibited private manufacture, transportation and sale of all but the most rudimentary weaponry. From the mid-seventh century, although production of arms and armour
cattle: chattel in early medieval Britain The argument that the imagery of these riddles alludes to both slaves bound by Welsh raiders and cattle herded by Welsh labourers draws support from the frequent equivalence of slaves and animals in both the Anglo-Saxon textual corpus and Welsh law codes, which makes their parallel captivity in these riddles a natural one. It has long been noted that slaves were ‘bought and sold as cattle’16 in Anglo-Saxon England based on sources such as the 85 Writing the Welsh borderlands Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which equates the two as
appeals on the rulings of local assemblies to kings. 50 However, the law codes do not envision reeves as enforcers of rulings if there was resistance – armed action was apparently not part of their duties. 51 When kings granted their estates to other lords, reeves passed into the service of these bishops, abbots or lay aristocrats, such as ealdormen, and they seem to have continued to fulfil the same duties, including, at least in the early tenth century, the legal tasks. With the emergence of the hundred system in the second half of the tenth century, reeves seem to
such presumptuous persons shall be duly restrained by suitable punishment meted out by the secular rulers, so that none dare blaspheme against Him who was crucified for our sake. 6 One of those who attempted to obey this injunction was Alfonso X of Castile (1252-1284), His seven-part law-code, known in