The power of the church

By the mid-tenth century, the church was a formidable power in the land, the wealthiest single institution, though its riches were divided among many abbeys and the bishoprics. Kings and magnates continued to make endowments. It was not as yet organized into parishes but its activities were centred on large churches or minsters, their name preserved in many place names, from where a small corps of itinerant priests served a wide area. In many places, an open-air cross served as the meeting place for religious observance.

Rough justice

Strongly religious as the Anglo-Saxons were by now, theirs was not a society which brought Christianity far into the practices of daily life. Violence was endemic. Free men carried weapons and were prepared to use them. Although fines and compensation payments were the most common judgements, many crimes were punishable by violent means. Floggings, branding, the slitting of noses and cropping of ears were routine minor punishments. Moneyers whose coins were of adulterated metal had a hand cut off. Hangings were frequent, drownings and beheadings were also resorted to. Imprisonment was rare and probably only employed in the case of high-ranking persons. Where a defendant's guilt was disputable, the judgement of God' was resorted to, in one of three forms. In the ordeal by water, if he floated, he was guilty (swimming was an unusual skill). Inside the church, he might be required to carry a pound weight of glowing iron for nine feet, or to take a stone out of boiling water. If the resultant injuries had not healed within three days, he was guilty. There are some signs of a more humanitarian attitude. Archbishop Wulfstan of York, drawing up laws in the time of King Cnut, wrote: 'Christian men shall not be condemned to death for all too little; but one shall determine lenient punishment for the benefit of the people, and not destroy for a little matter God's own handiwork.' King Athelstan raised the age at which a young thief might be hanged from twelve to fifteen. One social institution which the church long struggled to control was that of marriage. In the earlier centuries of the Anglo-Saxons, divorce and remarriage were easy to arrange. An early Kentish law states: 'If a freeman lie with the wife of a freeman, he shall pay ... wergild, and get another wife with his own money and bring her to the other man's home.' Such a law does not appear to set a high or independent status on the woman, but in Anglo-Saxon society a woman had greater freedom than was to be the case after the Norman Conquest. She could hold land in her own right and dispose of it as she pleased. She could appear as a compurgator (oath-taker) in court, and an eleventh-century law states that: 'No woman or maiden shall ever be forced to marry one whom she dislikes, nor be sold for money' (This of course relates only to free-born women). In fact the practice of arranged marriages, at least in property-owning families, would continue for several hundred years,