king's monetarius died, the king had his heriot: and if he died without dividing his estate, the king had all.

HUNTINGDON had three monetarii, rendering thirty shillings between the king and comes.

IN Shrewsbury the king had three monetarii, who, after they had bought the cuneos monetæ, as other monetarii of the country, on the fifteenth day gave to the king twenty shillings each; and this was done when the money was coining.

THERE was a monetarius at Colchester.

AT Chester there were seven monetarii, who gave to the king and comes seven pounds extra firman, when money was turned. 57

57 For these, see Domesday-book, under the different places.

In April 1817, a ploughman working in a field near Dorking, in Surrey, struck his plough against a wooden box which was found to contain nearly seven hundred Saxon silver coins, or pennies, of the following kings:

with about forty more that were dispersed. See Mr. T. Coombe's letter in Archol.V.

xix. P.

110.

But the Annals of the coinage, by the late Rev. R. Ruding, give the best account and plates of the Anglo-Saxon Coins.

Since this work was published, about the beginning of this year, 1820, a number of old silver coins, nine silver bracelets, and a thick silver twine, were found by a peasant, on digging a woody field in Bolstads Socked, in Sweden. Of the legible coins, eighty-seven were AngloSaxon ones. Eighty-three of these bear the date of 1005, and are of king Ethelred's reign: and two of them of his father's, king Edgar. The king of Sweden has purchased them; and they are now deposited in the Royal Cabinet of Antiquities at Stockholm.

APPENDIX.

No. III.

The History of the Laws of the ANGLO-SAXONS.

CHAP. I.

To trace the principles on which the laws of various nations have been formed, has been at all times an interesting object of intellectual exertion; and as the legislation of the more polished periods of states is much governed by its ancient institutions, it will be important to consider the principles on which our Anglo-Saxon forefathers framed their laws to punish public wrongs, and to redress civil injuries.

THERE are three characters of transgression, under which the objectionable actions of mankind may be classed: VICES, CRIMES, and SIN.

THEY are frequently intermingled, and rarely stand distinct. Each commonly leads to the others, and they are repeatedly seen to run into each other But by a more exact discrimination of their individual nature, and of their general character, we may consider those actions more peculiarly as VICES, which injure the well-being of the individual, without being intentionally directed against the welfare of others; those as CRIMES, which unjustly invade the life, property, liberty, and happiness of our fellow creatures; and those as SIN, which are offences committed against our Maker, or in violation of His promulgated laws and revealed will, or which are considered and represented by Him to have this displeasing and dangerous character in His estimation; of which He alone is the proper judge, and on which we can know nothing but from HIS information.

SIN is the proper subject of the consideration of the religious instructor and philosopher; and VICES, of the

CHAP.

I.

CHAP.

I.

ethical treatises of the moral reasoner.

But CRIMES are

the express objects of all human legislation. It is against them that laws are more especially made; and to repress them is the main principle and primary cause of all human government.

THE DEITY Himself takes cognizance of SIN; appoints its punishment, and provides its remedies. VICES chastise themselves by the disgrace and evil which they always, in time, produce, by their own agency, on those who will practise them. But CRIMES have every where, by the common consent of all mankind, in all ages, and from an experienced conviction of the necessity or expediency of the reprehension, been taken out of individual liberty and choice, and made, by special laws the subjects of decided prohibition, of personal infamy, of social aversion, and of penal suffering.

NATIONS have, indeed, at different periods of their political course, marked different actions with their legislative brand; and neither the censure nor the deterring severity has been the same in every country of our many-peopled globe. But in all, some actions have been stamped as crime by their unwritten or written law; and of these, FOUR descriptions of human offence have been universally, more or less, forbidden and punished.

THESE four offences, which have been every where considered as crimes, though often with some modifications, varying with the manners of the age and place, are HOMICIDE, PERSONAL INJURIES, THEFT, and ADULTERY; and we shall select these as the fittest heads under which we can exhibit the main principles of the criminal law of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors.

Their Laws on Homicide.

THE principle of pecuniary punishment distinguishes the laws of the Anglo-Saxons, and of all the Germam nations. Whether it arose from the idea, that the punishment of crime should be attended with satisfaction to the state, or with some benefit to the individual injured, or his family, or his lord; or whether, in their fierce dispositions

and warring habits, death was less dreaded as an evil than poverty; or whether the great were the authors of most of the crimes committed, and it was easier to make them responsible in their property than in their lives, we cannot at this distant æra decide.

of

THE Saxons made many distinctions in HOMICIDES. But all ranks of men were not of equal value in the eye the Saxon law, nor their lives equally worth protecting. The Saxons had therefore established many nice distinctions in this respect. Our present legislation considers the life of one man as sacred as that of another, and will not admit the degree of the crime of murder to depend on the rank or property of the deceased. Hence a peasant is now as secured from wilful homicide as a nobleman. It was otherwise among the Saxons.

THE protection which every man received was a curious exhibition of legislative arithmetic. Every man was valued at a certain sum, which was called his were; and whoever took his life, was punished by having to pay this

were.

THE were was the compensation allotted to the family or relations of the deceased for the loss of his life. But the Saxons had so far advanced in legislation, as to consider homicide as a public as well as private wrong. Hence, besides the redress appointed to the family of the deceased, another pecuniary fine was imposed on the murderer, which was called the wite. This was the satisfaction to be rendered to the community for the public wrong which had been committed. It was paid to the magistrate presiding over it, and varied according to the dignity of the person in whose jurisdiction the offence was committed; twelve shillings was the payment to an eorl, if the homicide occurred in his town, and fifty were forfeited to the king if the district were under the regal jurisdiction. '

IN the first Saxon laws which were committed to writing, or which have descended to us, and which were established in the beginning of the 7th century, murder

1 Wilkins, Leg. Saxon. p. 2, 3.

CHAP.

I.

I.

CHAP. appears to have been only punishable by the were and the wite, provided the homicide was not in the servile state. If an esne, a slave, killed a man, even "unsinningly,” it was not, as with us, esteemed an excusable homicide; it was punished by the forfeiture of all that he was worth. A person so punished presents us with the original idea of a felon; we consider this word to be a feo-lun, or one divested of all property.

3

IN the laws of Ethelbert the were seems to have been uniform. These laws state a meduman leod-gelde, a general penalty for murder, which appears to have been 100 shillings. The differences of the crime arising from the quality of the deceased, or the dignity of the magistrate within whose jurisdiction it occurred, or the circumstances of the action, were marked by differences of the wite rather than of the were. The wite in a king's town was fifty shillings; in an earl's twelve. If the deceased was a freeman, the wite was fifty shillings to the king as the drichtin, the lord or sovereign of the land. So, if the act was done at an open grave, twenty shillings was the wite; if the deceased was a ceorl, six shillings was the wite. If a læc killed the noblest guest, eighty shillings was the wite; if the next in rank, sixty; if the third, forty shillings. 4

THE wite and the leod gelde were to be paid by the murderer from his own property, and with good money. But if he fled from justice, his relations were made responsible for it.5

THE Saxon law-makers so far extended their care as to punish those who contributed to homicide by introducing weapons among those who were quarrelling. Twenty shillings composed the wite. 6

THE usual time for the payment of the wite and were is not stated; but forty days is mentioned in one case as the appointed period. 7

As the order and civilisation of the Anglo-Saxon society increased, a greater value was given to human life, and the penalties of its deprivation were augmented.

2 Wilkins, p. 7.

5 Ibid. p. 3.

3 Ibid. p. 2.
6 Ibid.

4 Ibid. p. 1—7.

7 Ibid.