BOOK nuptials, but was not actually given away until the morning afterwards, or until the marriage was completed, VIII. Nothing could be more calculated to produce a very striking dissimilarity, between the Gothic nations and the Oriental states, than this exaltation of the female sex to that honour, consequence, and independence, which European laws studied to uphold. As the education of youth will always rest principally with women, in the most ductile part of life, it is of the greatest importance that the fair sex should possess high estimation in society; and nothing could more certainly tend to perpetuate this feeling, than the privilege of possessing property in their own right, and at their own disposal. That the Anglo-Saxon ladies both inherited and disposed of property as they pleased, appears from many instances: a wife is mentioned who devised land by her will, with the consent of her husband, in his lifetime." We read also of land which a wife had sold in her husband's life." We frequently find wives the parties to a sale of land;" and still oftener we read of estates given to women, or devised by men of affluence to their wives." Widows selling property is also a common occurrence;" so is the incident of women devising it." That they inherited land is also clear, for a case is mentioned wherein, there being no male heir, the estate went to a female." Women appear as tenants in capite in Doomsday.. There are many instances of land being granted to both husband and wife." The queens frequently join in the charters with the kings;" and it is once mentioned, that a widow and the heirs were sued for her husband's debts." Indeed, the instances of women having property transferred to them, .VIII. and also of their transmitting it to others, surround us on all CHAP. sides. To name only a few: a king's mother gave five hides to a noble matron, which she gave to a monastery." When a bishop had bought some lands of an husband and a wife, he fixed a day when she should come and surrender them, because she had the greater right to the land by a former husband." A mother bequeathed property to two of her daughters; and to her third daughter, Leosware, she gave an estate at Weddreringesete, on the reproachful condition, that she should keep herself chaste, or marry, that she and her progeny might not be branded with the infamy of the contagion of prostitution." In the oldest. Anglo-Saxon law, widows were protected by an express regulation. Four ranks are mentioned: an eorleund's widow, another sort, a third and fourth sort. Their tranquillity invaded was to be punished by fines adapted to their quality, as fifty shillings, twenty, twelve, and six shillings.23 They were also guarded from personal violence. If any took a widow without her consent, he was to be fined a double mulct. It was also expressly forbidden to any one to marry a woman if she was unwilling." The morgen gift was not left optional to the husband to give or withhold after the marriage. One of the laws of Ina expressly provide, that if a man bargained for a woman, and the gyft was not duly forthcoming, he should actually pay the money, and also a penalty and a compensation to her sureties for breaking his troth.26 The morgen gift was also the means by which they punished widows who married too early. Twelve months was the legal term prescribed for widowhood. By Ethelred's law, every widow who kept her 20 3 Gale, 481. 21 Ibid. 472. 22 Ibid. 507. So Alfred in his will gives estates to his three daughters, and also money. 23 Wilk. Leg. Sax. 7. 25 Ibid. 145. 26 Ibid. 20. VIII. BOOK self in the peace of God and of the king, and who remained twelve months without a husband, might choose afterwards as she pleased." But by a subsequent law, if she married within the year, she lost her morgen gift, and all the property which she derived from her first husband." These pecuniary bargains which were made on the AngloSaxon marriages do not breathe much of the spirit of affectionate romance. The men, however, cannot be called mercenary suitors, as they appear to have been the pay-masters. These contracts give occasion to the Saxon legislators to express the fact of treating for a marriage by the terms of buying a wife. Hence our oldest law says, if a man buys a maiden, the bargain shall stand if there be no deceit; otherwise, she should be restored to her home, and his money should be returned to him." So, in the penalty before mentioned annexed to the nonpayment of the morgen gift, the expression used is, if a man buys a wife." In this kind of marriage-bargains it was a necessary protection extended to the lover, that the same law which forbade the compelling a woman to marry the man she disliked, also, as an impartial counterpart of justice, directed that a man should not be forced to give his money, unless he was desirous to bestow it of his own free will." There is another passage which tends to express, that marriage was considered as the purchase of the lady. "If a freeman lays with the wife of a "freeman, he must pay the were, and obtain another woman "with his own money, and lead her to the other."" In this point we have greatly improved on the customs, or at least the language of our ancestors. Pecuniary considerations and arrangements are still important formulas preceding marriages; but ladies frequently bring their husband property, instead of receiving it; and if they do not, their affection and attentions are his dearest treasure. They are not now either CHAP. bought or sold, unless where interest counterfeits affection. After adding that marriages were forbidden within certain degrees of consanguinity," we have only the unpleasing task remaining of mentioning the penaltics which where attached to the violation of female chastity. If a slave committed a rape on a female slave, he was punished with a corporal mutilation. If any one compelled an immature maiden, he was to abide the same punishment. Whoever violated a ceorl's wife, was to pay him five shillings, and be fined sixty shillings.” For adultery with the wife of a twelve hundred man, the offender was to pay one hundred and twenty shillings; and one hundred shillings for the wife of a six hundred man, and forty shillings for a ceorl's wife. This might be paid in live property, and no man might sell another for it. For the degrees of intimacy with a ceorl's wife, which are specified, various fines were exacted." The earliest Saxon laws were attentive to this vice: in those of Ethelred fifty shillings were the appointed penalty for intimacy with the king's maiden, half that sum with his grinding servant, and twelve shillings with another, or with an earl's cup-bearer. The chastity of a ceorl's attendant was guarded by six shillings, and of inferior servants by the diminished penalty of fifty and thirty scattas. 36 By the same laws, for a rape on a servile woman, the offender was to pay her owner fifty shillings, and then to buy her at the will of her owner. If she was pregnant, he was to pay thirty-five shillings, and fifteen shillings to the king, and twenty shillings if betrothed to another." 33 Wilk. Leg. Sax. 52, 129. 35 Ibid. 37. 36 Wilk. Leg. Sax. p. 8. VIH. BOOK Dignity by birth; E CHA P. IX. Classes and Condition of Society. VERY man in the Anglo-Saxon society beneath the cyning and his family was in one of these classes. He was either in high estimation from his birth; or he was in a state of dignity from office, or from property; or he was a freeman; or a freed-man; or he was in one of the servile classes. 66 There was certainly a personal distinction arising from birth. Individuals are described in these times as noble by descent. The expression ethelboren, or noble born, occurs several times, even in the laws. A very forcible passage on this subject appears in the life of St. Guthlac: "There was a noble (ethiela) man in the high nation of the Mercians; "he was of the oldest race, and the noblest (æthelstan) that "was named Iclingas." The sense of this cannot be mistaken: a family is expressly distinguished from the rest by an appropriated name “ Iclingas." We may recollect here that Iornandes says of the Goths, that they had a noble race called the Balthæ, from whence Alaric sprung. In the canons of Edgar another decisive passage, attests, that superiority of birth was felt to convey superior consequence; for it was found necessary to require, "that no forth-boren priest despise one that is less born, because, if men think rightly, all men are of one origin." No peculiar titles, as with us, seem to have distinguished the nobly born; they were rather marked out to their fellows by that name of the family which had become illustrious, as the Fabii and Cornelii of the Romans. Their title was formed by the addition of ing to the name of the ancestor whose fame produced their 66 5 4 MS. Vefp. D. 21. p. 19. * See vol. i. of this work, p. 67. |