[Illustration: _No. 37. Washing and Scourging._]
The cruelty of the Anglo-Saxon ladies to their servants offers a contrast to the generally mild character of the punishments inflicted by the Anglo-Saxon laws. The laws of Ethelred contain the following injunction, showing how contrary capital punishment is to the spirit of Anglo-Saxon legislation:--“And the ordinance of our lord, and of his witan (parliament), is, that Christian men for all too little be not condemned to death; but in general let mild punishment be decreed, for the people’s need; and let not for a little God’s handywork and his own purchase be destroyed, which he dearly bought.” This injunction is repeated in the laws of Canute. It appears that the usual method of inflicting death upon criminals was by hanging. Our cut, No. 38, taken from the illuminations to Alfric’s version of Genesis, represents an Anglo-Saxon gallows (_galga_), and the rather primitive method of carrying the last penalty of the law into effect. The early illuminated manuscripts give us few representations of popular punishments. The Anglo-Saxon vocabularies enumerate the following implements of punishment, besides the _galga_, or gallows: fetters (_fæter_, _cops_), distinguished into foot-fetters and hand-fetters; shackles (_scacul_, or _sceacul_), which appear to have been used specially for the neck; a _swipa_, or scourge; _ostig gyrd_, a knotted rod; _tindig_, explained by the Latin _scorpio_, and meaning apparently a whip with knots or plummets at the end of thongs, like those used by the charioteers in the cuts in our next chapter; and an instrument of torture called a _threpel_, which is explained by the Latin _equuleus_. The following cut, No. 39, from the Harleian MS., No. 603 (so often quoted), shows us the stocks, generally placed by the side of the public road at the entrance to the town. Two other offenders are attached to the columns of the public building, perhaps a court-house, by apparently a rope and a chain. The Anglo-Saxon laws prescribe few corporal punishments, but substitute for them the payment of fines, or compensation-money, and these are proportioned to the offences with very extraordinary minuteness. Thus, to select a few examples from the very numerous list of injuries which may be done to a man’s person,--if any one struck off an ear, he was to pay twelve shillings, and, if an eye, fifty shillings; if the nose were cut through, the payment was nine shillings. “For each of the four front teeth, six shillings; for the tooth which stands next to them, four shillings; for that which follows, three shillings; and for all the others, a shilling each.” If a thumb were struck off, it was valued at twenty shillings. “If the shooting finger were struck off” (a term which shows how incorrectly it has been assumed that the Anglo-Saxons were not accustomed to the bow), the compensation was eight shillings; for the middle finger, four shillings; for the ring-finger, six shillings; and for the little finger eleven shillings. The thumb-nail was valued at three shillings; and the finger-nails at one shilling each.