Imagine that you are an Early Medieval Englishman named Godstan, who lives in a village near the Kentish city of Rochester some time in the 900s. You have been summoned to the hall of the local ealdorman to answer for the crime of murder. Who did you kill? Another man in your village, who had attacked members of your family and undermined your business. The ealdorman hears your case, and that of the victim’s family. You do not see any reason to deny your deed, and so the ealdorman decrees you must pay a compensation of 200 shillings to the man’s family and 100 shillings as a fine for breaking the king’s peace.
As you leave the hall and prepare to head home, you hear what sounds like a great deal of commotion. Ahead of you, a man is being dragged into the clearing in front of the hall. The ealdorman comes out to see what all the fuss is about, and learns that this man is a thief who was found stealing decorative clothing items in the town. This man is put to death where he stands. You see nothing wrong with this, and head off.
Now this is not meant to be an entirely accurate picture of criminal justice in Early Medieval England, but it does get one thing right: a man would be given a fine for murder, but the death penalty for thievery. But why?
To answer this question, we need to understand something specific about the culture of England at this time: feuding. So what is feuding? Well, to use a wikipedia definition (I am not sorry), it is a ‘is a long-running argument or fight, often between social groups of people, especially families or clans.’ This is largely discouraged in society today, but at the time there was a general assumption that this was a legitimate and somewhat unavoidable social practice (Lambert 2017: 230). The role of law was to ensure that both parties came out with their honour intact (ibid: 56), and to restrict the effects of a feud getting out of control (Lapidge 2013: 187). This was built on the wergeld system, meaning ‘man-payment,’ which set a legal value of a person’s life and was a sum payable to relatives to essentially pay your way out of a feud if a person was killed (ibid: 489). This was convenient for a society in which the demands of honour pressured people to seek vengeance for wrongs done against their kinsmen or other associates, like a lord (ibid: 187).
The concept of the mundbyrd, meaning the right of individuals to peace and security in the kingdom, dominates the law codes. The existence of violent feuding, whilst regulated by the laws, is not treated as completely antithetical to peace and security. This is not surprising if you consider that the establishment of royal/state authority is less about the removal of violence but the regulation and monopolisation of it. If you see the state as Weber did, that being, as a monopoly on the legitimate use of force (Munro 2023), then you can also see how Early Medieval kings begun to legislate what force they deemed as legitimate.
Let’s consider two of the laws of Alfred the Great, who reigned from 871-99 CE.
‘XXXVIII … Ēac wē cweðað þæt mon mōte mid his hlāforde feohtan orwīge, gif mon on ðone hlāford fiohte; swā mōt se hlāford mid þȳ men feohtan.’
‘Further, we say that a man may fight on behalf of his lord without battle, if a man fights against the lord; likewise may the lord fight on behalf of [his] men.’
In this context, ‘without battle’ means without the process of revenge that comes with general homicide (Marsden 2015). Two things are established here. First, that there are reciprocal bonds of service between lords and their “men.” Second, that infractions against either party in this context can allow for violence without retribution by the state. This is violence not in absence of law, but in acceptance of law. Now let’s consider another law:
‘XXIII Gif mon ceorles mennen tō nēdhǣmde geðrēatað, mid V scillingum gebēte þām ceorle ond LX scillinga tō wīte. Gif ðēowmon þēowne tō nēdhǣmde genēde, bēte mid his ēowende.’
‘If a man rapes a commoner’s slave woman, [let him] make good [with a payment of] five shillings to the commoner and sixty shilling in punishment. If a male slave rapes [her], he is to pay compensation with his genitals.’
Committing an act of sexual violence against a man’s slave might be related to a feud between those men, or it may not. In either case, the punishment is far greater (and far more violent) for the unfree than the free. We do not need to have sympathy for the unfree rapist to see how violence is a far more accepted part of the free, male, livelihood and identity.
The social (as opposed to legal) acceptance of feuding also found its way into some of the literature of the period, notwithstanding suggestions of the pain said feuding could cause. The classic example of feuding in Old English literature is Beowulf, where Grendel’s attacks on Heorot necessitate vengeance (which, in this case, could not be resolved peacefully) (O’Keefe 2013: 105). Beyond the heroic life of Beowulf, however, there is a broader focus in Old English poetry on the conflicts within social groups that are based on matters of honour and reputation (ibid).
One example is the poem Wulf and Eadwacer, which tells a story about the speaker’s (theorised to be a woman) imprisonment on an island whilst her lover or husband is in exile, perhaps being hunted by the speaker’s people (Baker 2012).
‘Wulf is on īege, ic on ōþerre.
Fæst is þæt ēglond, fenne biworpen.
Sindon wælrēowe weras þǣr on īge;
willað hȳ hine āþecgan gif hē on þrēat cymeð.’
‘Wulf is on an island I on another.
Secure is that island surrounded by fen.
They are slaughter-cruel the men on the island.
They wish to kill him if he comes violently.’
Another example is The Wife’s Lament, a tale of a woman whose husband has been exiled after his involvement in a feud. She followed him, only for his kinsmen to scheme to separate them (Baker 2012).
‘Ǣrest mīn hlāford ġewāt heonan of lēodum
ofer ȳþa ġelāc; hæfde iċ ūhtċearehwǣr mīn lēodfruma londes wǣre.
Ðā iċ mē fēran ġewāt folgað sēċan,
winelēas wræċċa, for mīnre wēaþearfe,
ongunnon þæt þæs monnes māgas hycgan
þurh dyrne ġeþōht þæt hȳ tōdǣlden unc,
þæt wit ġewīdost in woruldrīċe
lifdon lāðlicost, ond mec longade’
‘First my lord departed hence from my people
Over tossing waves I had sorrow at dawn
Where my lord of a land was.
When I departed on a journey seeking service,
Friendless exile for my woeful need,
Begin that the man’s relatives think
Through secret thought that they divided us,
So that we furthest apart in the kingdom of the world
Live wretchedly and me longing.’
These poems, rather than explicitly idealising violent conduct (as we might find in heroic tales like Beowulf), clearly communicate the sorrows that come with feuds. It is possible that the female perspective was intentionally chosen to highlight the gendered nature of feuding’s unwitting victims: women, who are caught up in a violent society that praises honour-based violence amongst men. Neither of these poems explicitly call out feuding as a negative practice, and it is noteworthy that, at least in a legal sense, no real alternative for dealing with personal conflicts is envisaged (Lambert 2017: 56). This does not mean, of course, that it should not be contained, or that people were not able to see its negative effects.
In either case, the existence of both positive depictions of feuding (in poems like Beowulf, or in texts that incentivise the violent defence of honour) and negative ones (in poems like the ones above) demonstrate the relative ubiquity of feuding as a practice. The wergeld system, and the broader set of compensatory or penalty payments for violence, grew in scope amongst later kings but never took to outlawing feuding entirely (Lapidge 2013: 187).
However, proving the relative acceptance of feuding, voluntary or otherwise, in royal authority becomes a lot easier when we consider its attitude towards theft. Theft, as narrated in the introduction to this essay, is generally deemed worthy of harsh punishment (Lambert 2017: 355). The extremities of this can be seen in the difference between a 2 shilling compensation for the loss of a middle fingernail, and the death penalty for thefts of goods over 8 pence (ibid: 227). In the laws of the time of Alfred, Edward the Elder, Æthelstan, Edmund, and Cnut, oaths are demanded of subjects first implicitly, and later explicitly, to avoid theft (Lapidge 2013: 345). In the laws of Edgar and Cnut, theft and treason were equated (ibid: 364). In the laws of Ine of Wessex, a foreign man travelling through a wood or away from a road could be presumed to be a thief and murdered (or put to ransom, if they were lucky) (The Anglo Saxons).
To revisit the earlier point about the encouragement of free, male violence, it is noteworthy that men were encouraged in law to use violence against thieves. Here is a passage from a London guild set up in response to Æthelstan’s anti-theft campaign:
‘We have pronounced that, no matter who did the deeds which avenged the injury of us all, we were all in one friendship and in one enmity, whichever should result; and he who was before others in killing a thief, should be the better off by 12 pence from the money of us all for the deed and for the enterprise.’ (Lambert 2017: 228)
Violence in this context was a completely legitimate endeavour. In the narrative at the beginning of this essay, those men who brought in a thief would have been expected socially to have done so. Why this is the case for thieves, and not for murderers, is up for debate. In Tom Lambert’s Law and Order in Anglo-Saxon England (to which this whole article is indebted), it is a question of culture and one of trust. If feuding is a socially accepted practice, then it is done in the open, the culprits are known, and a compensatory payment can be agreed. If the culprit is a thief, however, then they are not known. There is no system therefore that can be used for compensation, and honour and trust break down since the matter cannot be resolved. This is perhaps why there is also a special kind of punishable violence in the law code called morð, associated with killing that happens in secrecy, outside of the feuding system (ibid: 194).
The legal restraints placed on feuding did progressively grow, with later kings, such as Alfred and Edmund (Lapidge 2013: 187). The rate of this growth, however, was far outstripped by the growth in punishment for thievery. The laws of King Æthelberht of Kent (c. 550 - 616), for example, stipulate that a freeman who steals from a freeman should pay three fold compensation, and then a fine to the King (The Anglo Saxons). Compare this to the above quoted laws of Ine of Wessex (c. 670 - 726), which legislates the death penalty for thieves. By the time of the laws of Alfred the Great (c.848/849-899), it was the death penalty law that prevailed. This happened alongside the strengthening of the various kingships of Early Medieval England. The fact that the strengthening of the law was unevenly applied (and in such an extreme way) is very noteworthy.
It would be sensible to imagine that an expansion of state power would also lead to an expansion of criminal justice, or the state’s involvement in “crime.” It seems silly, perhaps, to think that in the 500 or so years that the Saxon king’s power grew, that honour killings never saw much more of a punishment than a fine. However, this is in keeping with the way criminal justice works in all our societies.
What do I mean? Well, criminal justice is not a natural given right. First, you need to determine what a “crime” is, what the varying levels of crime are, and then how you will deal with them. For every society, for all of history, these ideas have been quite different, either because of, or in response to, socio-cultural realities of either the people or their elites. In the United Kingdom, for example, the new Police and Crime Bill will stipulate that the damage of memorials can lead to up to 10 years in prison. This is in response to the movement Black Lives Matter, and the famous toppling of the statue of the slaver Edward Colston. 10 years is also the maximum prison time for possession of indecent photographs of children. That, to many, may seem like an absurd imbalance. This occurs because the Government is acting not just from its own beliefs, but from what it perceives are the beliefs and priorities of groups important to it (voters, funders, etc…). Culture, cultural movements, and ideology lay the groundwork for changes in the legal system.
It is possible that people in Early Medieval England took issue with the prevalence of feuding. We get a hint of that in the poetry discussed in this essay. We cannot say for certain the extent to which kings were following public opinion in their application of the law. What we do know is that feuding was acceptable enough, or ubiquitous enough, to not require the heavy-handed approach applied to thievery. We also know that at some point, post-1066, this changed. This is not because future governments were necessarily stronger, but because the culture, in government or society, changed.
Sources
Baker, M. (2012), Old English Aerobics.
Lambert, T. (2017), Law and Order in Anglo-Saxon England, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lapidge, M. (2013), The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Anglo Saxon England, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Marsden, R. (2015), The Cambridge Old English Reader, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Munro, A. (2023), State monopoly on violence | political science and sociology | Britannica.
O’Keefe, K. O. (2013), ‘Values and ethics in heroic literature’, in The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature, ed. Godden, M. & Lapidge, M, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.