to sites where the most severe penalties of the law were carried out. The survival of many Continental tribal and clan names in all the Anglo-Saxon States, side by side with different manorial customary laws, is evidence of a great commingling in England of Continental tribal immigrants. The tribal traditions lived long on English soil. The early Kings were styled Kings of people and not of territories. As new tribal States were formed in England, the ealdormen, who were their viceroys, took their titles from their tribes and not from their States, such as the Ealdorman of the Sumersætas, the Hecanas, the Wilsætas, etc. After the conversion of the people to Christianity grants by early Kings of the power of administering justice in their territories to Abbots and other great men—i.e., seignorial jurisdiction—certainly were made. The early charters of the Abbeys of Peterborough, Glastonbury, and others, show that in whatever words the power may have been conferred, it was a reality. It is this early delegation of judicial authority which imparts so great an interest to some of the sites which were the meeting-places of old courts, or some of the ancient places of execution. Cnut, in his laws, reaffirms the legal authority which the King has over all men in Wessex, unless, he adds, ‘he will more amply honour anyone and concorde to him this worship.’ It was in regard to the freemen only that the administration of the law was closely connected with the organization of the kindred. If an unfree man was accused of any crime, the oaths of his brothers, uncles, and cousins were not acceptable as evidence of his innocence, for by remote tribal custom, which prevailed for centuries after the early Anglo-Saxon settlement, such relatives had not the privileges of a free kindred. If a man was made a freeman he was still by tribal custom without kindred to answer for him, and the lord had to do this until after several generations his descendants had become a kindred.[1]
- ↑ Laws of Wihtræd, 8, and Seebohm, F., ‘Tribal Custom in Anglo-Saxon Law,’ 46.
