Aethelstan: The First King of England by Sarah Foot

Author:Sarah Foot [Foot, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Europe, Medieval, Royalty, Historical, Biography & Autobiography, Great Britain, History
ISBN: 9780300125351
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2011-07-11T23:00:00+00:00

Æthelstan went on to explain why he felt compelled to legislate again: ‘The cause which has led us to issue this decree is that all the oaths, pledges and sureties which were given there [i.e. at Grately] have been disregarded and broken, and we know of no other course which we can follow with confidence, unless it be this.’54 Can we detect a faint note of despair in the king's voice here? Not merely exasperated by his subjects' collective failure to heed his legal injunctions and keep their oaths (specifically the oaths to keep the peace which all his subjects had given to his reeves who stood proxy for the king in each locality),55 the king sounds as if he is struggling to find fresh ideas. So, rather than merely repeating the previous statements, or issuing yet more punitive directives, Æthelstan's council adopted a different strategy against theft at Exeter. That code offered a temporary amnesty to thieves, letting them off payment of fines until the Rogation Days (perhaps those in May) if they paid compensation to injured parties for every theft. In a later council meeting at Faversham in Kent, the king went even further, promising a pardon for criminals ‘for any crime whatsoever which was committed before the Council on condition that henceforth and forever they abstain from all evil doing’ and before August ‘confess their crimes and make amends for everything of which they have been guilty’.56 In his Exeter code the king also tried other methods to tackle powerful kindreds in the localities, decreeing that disturbers of the peace should be uprooted from their native districts and transplanted with their families and property to other parts of the realm, where they could do less harm. Any who returned thereafter to their homes would be treated with the severity meted out to thieves caught in the act.57 Further, he attempted to eradicate corruption and neglect of the law by his reeves, by threatening both the imposition of fines and removal from office for such disobedience.58

The strategy adopted at Exeter and at Faversham of offering some amnesty to thieves did not last long; we find a tougher clampdown on thieves in the provisions of Æthelstan's next code issued when his council met at Thunderfield (IV Æthelstan). Thieves now found themselves facing the death penalty, whether or not they had been caught in the act (although Æthelstan did modify this blanket condemnation in the statement he made at Whittlebury that juveniles under the age of fifteen should not be executed ‘because he thought it too cruel to kill so many young people and for such small crimes as he understood to be the case everywhere’).59 Any thief who took to flight was to be pursued to his death, and anyone who met him should kill him. Heavy fines were imposed on reeves who failed to carry out the king's command in this matter, who would also ‘suffer such disgrace as has been ordained’.60 In the same code the king

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