Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/114

 100 /. BEFORE THE NORMAN CONQUEST archy treason was added to the rude catalogue of crimes, under continental influence ultimately derived from Roman law; but the sin of plotting against the sovereign was the more readily conceived as heinous above all others by reason of the .ancient Germanic principle of faith between a lord and his men. This prominence of the personal relation explains why down to quite modern times the murder of a husband by his wife, of a master by his servant, and of an ecclesiastical superior by a clerk, secular or regular, owing him obedience, were specially classed as " petit treason " and distinguished from murder in general.^ Secret murder as opposed to open slaying was treated with special severity. This throws no light on our later criminal law ; nor has it much to do with love of a fair fight, though this may have strengthened the feeling; rather it goes back to a time when witchcraft, and poisoning as presumably con- nected therewith, were believed to be unavoidable by ordinary caution, and regarded with a supernatural horror which is still easy to observe among barbarous people. With these exceptions, and a few later ones of offences reserved for the king's jurisdiction, crimes were not classified or distinguished in Anglo-Saxon custom save by the amount of public fine ^ and private composition required to redeem the wrong-doer's life in each case. Capital punishment and money payment, or rather liabiUty to the blood-feud redeemable by money payment, and slavery for a thief who could not make the proper fine, were the only means of compulsion generally applicable, though false accusers and some other infamous persons were liable to corporal penalties. Imprisonment is not heard of as a substantive punishment ; and it is needless to say that nothing like a system of penal discipline was known. We cannot doubt that a large number of offences, even notorious ones, went unpunished. The more skilled and subtle attacks on property, such as forgery and allied kinds of fraud, did not occur, not because men were more honest, » Bl. Com. iv. 203. ranging the composition than a punishment. But it is treated as penal from the earliest period of written laws. In the tenth century it could mean pain or torment ; see C. D. 1222 ad fin.
 * Wite was probably, in its origin, rather a fee to the court for ar-