Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/78

 58 Hiflory of Domefiic Manners his mother, that not having a whip, fhe beat him with fome candles, which were the firft thing that fell under her hand, until he was almoft infenfible. " On this account he dreaded candles during the reft of his life, to fuch a degree that he would never futfer the light of them to be introduced in his prefence !" The cruelty of the Anglo-Saxon ladies to their fervants offers a con- traft to the generally mild charader of the puniflmients infiifted by the Anglo-Saxon laws. The laws of Ethelred contain the following injunftion, fliowing how contrary capital puniiliment is to the fpirit of Anglo-Saxon legillation : — "And the ordinance of our lord, and of his witan (parliament), is, that Chriftian men for all too little be not condemned to death 3 but in general let mild punifliment be decreed, for the people's need ; and let not for a little God's handywork and his own purchafe be deftroyed, which he dearly bought." This injunftion is repeated in the laws of Canute. It appears that the ufual method of inflifting death upon criminals was by hanging. Our cut. No. 38, taken from the illuminations to Alfric's verfion of Genefis, reprefents an Anglo-Saxon gallows (go/ga), and the rather primitive method of carrying the laft penalty of the law into efiett. The early illuminated manufcripts give us few reprefentations of popular punilhments. The Anglo-Saxon vocabularies enumerate the following implements of punifliment, befides the galga, or gallows : fetters {fceter, cops), diftinguiflied into foot-fetters and hand-fetters ; fliackles {fcacul, or fccacul), which appear to have been ufed fpecially for the neck ; a fwipa, or fcourge ; ojlig gi/rd, a knotted rod ; tindig, explained by the Latin fcorpio, and meaning apparently a whip with knots or plummets at the end of thongs, like thofe ufed by the charioteers in the cuts in our next chapter 3 and an inftrument of torture called a threpcl, which is explained by the Latin cquiih'us