These institutions are not peculiar to the ancient Germans. They seem to be the necessary progress of criminal jurisprudence among every free people, where the will of the sovereign is not implicitly obeyed. We find them among the ancient Greeks during the time of the Trojan war. Compositions for murder are mentioned in Nestor's speech to Achilles in the ninth Iliad and are called APOINAI. The Irish, who never had any connexions with the German nations, adopted the same practice till very lately; and the price of a man's head was called among them his ERIC; as we learn from Sir John Davis. The same custom seems also to have prevailed among the Jews [l]. [FN [l] Exod. cap. xxi. 29, 30.]
Theft and robbery were frequent among the Anglo-Saxons. In order to impose some check upon these crimes, it was ordained, that no man should sell or buy any thing above twenty-pence value, except in open market [m]; and every bargain of sale must be executed before witnesses [n]. Gangs of robbers much disturbed the peace of the country; and the law determined, that a tribe of banditti, consisting of between seven and thirty-five persons, was to be called a TURMA, or troop: any greater company was denominated an army [o]. The punishments for this crime were various, but none of them capital [p]. If any man could track his stolen cattle into another's ground, the latter was obliged to show the tracks out of it, or pay their value [q]. [FN [m] LL. Aethelst. Sec. 12. [n] Ibid. Sec. 10, 12. LL. Edg. apud Wilkins, p. 80. LL. Ethelredi, Sec. 4 apud Wilkins, p. 103. Hloth. and Eadm. Sec. 16. LL. Canut. Sec. 22. [o] LL. Inae, Sec. 12. [p] LL. Inae, Sec. 37. [q] LL. Aethelst. Sec. 2. Wilkins, p. 63.]
Rebellion, to whatever excess it was carried, was not capital, but might be redeemed by a sum of money [r]. The legislators, knowing it impossible to prevent all disorders, only imposed a higher fine on breaches of the peace committed in the king's court, or before an alderman or bishop. An alehouse too seems to have been considered as a privileged place; and any quarrels that arose there were more severely punished than elsewhere [s]. [FN [r] LL. Ethelredi, apud Wilkins, p. 110. LL. Aelf. Sec. 4. Wilkins, p. 35. [s] LL. Hloth. and Eadm. Sec. 12, 13. LL. Ethelr. apud Wilkins, p. 117.]