Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/76

 56 Hijiory of Dofnejlic Manners has been completed), and the marriage take not place," he was required to pay the money, befides other compenfation. And again, by one of Alfred's laws, it was provided, " If any one deceive an unbetrothed woman, and fleep with her, let him pay for her, and have her afterwards to wife ; but if the father of the woman will not give her, let him pay money according to her dowry." Regulations relating to the buying of a wife, are found in the Anglo-Saxon laws. We learn nothing in the fafts of hiftory to the difcredit of the Anglo- Saxon charafter in general. As in other countries, in the fame condition of fociety, they appear capable of great crimes, and of equally great afts of goodnefs and virtue. Generally fpeaking, their leafl: amiable trait was the treatment of their fervants or Haves 5 for this clafs among the Anglo-Saxons were in a ftate of abfolute fervitude, might be bought and fold, and had no proteftion in the law againtl their mafters and miftreffes, who, in fa£t, had power of life and death over them. We gather from the ecclefiaftlcal canons that, at leall in the earlier periods of Anglo-Saxon hiftory, it was not unufual for fervants to be fcourged to death by or by order of their miftreffes. Some of the colledions of local miracles, fuch as thofe of St. Swithun, at Winchefter (of the tenth century), furnifh us with horrible piftures of the cruel treatment to which female flaves efpecially were fubjefted. For comparatively ftight offences they were loaded with gyves and fetters, and fubjefted to all kinds of tortures. Several of thefe are curioufly illuftrative of domeftic manners. On one occafion, the maid- fervant of Teothic the bell-maker {campanarius), of Winchefter, was, for "a flight offence," placed in iron fetters, and chained up by the feet and hands all night. Next morning flie was taken out to be frightfully beaten, and flie was put again into her bonds j but in the enfuing night flie contrived to make her efcape, and fled to the church to feek fanftuary at the tomb of St. Swithun, for being in a ftate of fervitude there was no legal proteftion for her. On another occafion, a female fervant had been ftolen from a former mafter, and had pafled into the poffeffion of another mafter in Winchefter. One day her former mafter came to Winchefter, and the girl, hearing of it, went to fpeak to him. When her miftrefs heard that flie had been fcen to talk with a man from