EARLY ENGLISH PROCEDURE. Bv M. E. E. Kerr. IN early English jurisprudence, if we may designate by that appellation anything so primitive and lacking in those elements which make for jurisprudence in our day, criminal law and criminal procedure monopolize by far the greater part. In early English proced ure there were several well-defined steps of progress in its development, such as the insti tution and practice of wergild, which degen erated into private war and bloody feuds, the investiture of the people with the right of sum mary punishment; the law of infangthicf— a procedure so summary as to scarcely deserve the name of procedure at all; and the law of purgation and urthcil, or ordeal. The latter is thought to have formed the first step towards our modern law and procedure. The latter gradually encroached upon and supplanted theInothers, early and times wasthe in turn reallyitself efficient supplanted. check upon crimes of violence was the fear of private vengeance, which degenerated into private war, bloody feuds, and anarchy. In the AngloSaxon law we find the institution of the wer gild, according to which each man, whatever his station or walk in life, had a price fixed upon his life and the limbs of his body 1 1 [t is to be noted that the Saxons preserved classdistinctions as rigorously as they were ever preserved by the lirahmins of India. Nithard, writing about 483, says the whole people were divided into three ranks, namely : I. edhilingi, or nobilcs; 2. frilingui. or ingenuiles; and 3. lazzi, or serviles. Nithard's Hist, iv., 2. This distinc tion was carried into the Capitulare Saxonum. Boluze, i., 199-200, art. 3. See. Richthofen, Zur Lex Saxonum. p. 346. Tacitus divides them into the nobilis, the ingenuus. and the servus or colonus, which is the eorl, the ceorl, and the la-t of the old Kentish laws two centuries earlier. Rudolf, writing about 863. says: "The race consists of four ranks of men; the noble, the free, the freedmen, and the scrvi. And it is established by law that no order shall in contracting marriage remove the landmarks of its own lot; but noble must marry noble, freedman freedwoman, serf handmaid If any take a wife of different or higher rank than his own, he has to expiate the act with his life." Rudolf, Translatio Sancti Alcxandri; See Pretz. ii„ 674; Richthofun, Zur Lex Saxorum, 223229; Wait*, D. V. G. i., 213.
Every life had its value, and according to that valuation must any one or his family and kin dred pay, for its destruction, to the family and kinsmen of the man whose life was taken. According to that valuation, also, was the weight of his oath in court. Thus the oath of a twelfhynd man was worth six times that of a twyhynd man, and twice that of a sixhynd man. The price at which an injury was to be atoned for, varied in each of the Germanic races.1 In the English kingdoms, in the tariff of wergilds the basis of calculation was the wergild of two hundred shillings, which marked the ceorl, twyhynd, or simple free man. The thegn was worth twelve hundred shillings. The Britain, or wealth, was worth half as much as the Saxon, or Angle. If he possessed five hides, he was sixhynd; if he possessed but one, he was worth a hundred shillings. The higher ranks, — the king, archbishop, bishop, ealdorman, and eorl, — were estimated in multiples in a similar manner. The king's high reeve was worth twice the thegn, the bishop and earlman four times, the king and archbishop six times, etc.1 The exaction of these respective wers or head-pieces of the various ranks of early Saxon society, as has already been remarked, degenerated into private war, engendering bloody feuds and anarchy. To this succeeded the era when people were invested by law with the right of inflicting summary punish ment on wrongdoers whose offences injured them personally. This was but a short step in advancement from private war; but to recognize the right of the injured husband to then and there put the adulterer to death, or of the owner of stolen property to inflict a 'See collection of tariff of wergilds in Robertson's Scotland Under Her Early Kings, ii., 275-283. 'Stubbs, Const. Hist. Eng. (2nd ed. 1875). vol. i., 161.
