PAST CRIMEShundred ploughs) or borough had a court. Catching criminals and bringing
them to trial was the responsibility of the residents of each borough or
hundred, and the court was presided over by an official appointed by the
crown. More serious cases went to the shire court or the king himself. The
shire courts usually met twice a year and also dealt with matters where there
was a dispute between different hundreds.
All free men aged twelve or over had to take an oath to act within the law,
and to denounce criminals. The oath was to the crown–to break it amounted
to treason. There was a hierarchy of responsibilities, duties owed from the
local ‘tithingman’ responsible for a small group of citizens, to the
‘hundredman’who oversaw a hundred division of a shire, to the shirereeve
and ultimately to the king. It was the hundredman who had the authority to
raise a posse to pursue criminals.
Every four weeks, the hundred court would meet at a central
neighbourhood site to hear local matters about landholding, local government
and criminal matters. They could then set a date to hear criminal cases. The
first stage was for the victim of a crime to make a statement on oath, name the
perpetrator and demand that he be brought before the court. The court would
then decide if the matter was legitimate and proper. If they thought it was,
they would name a date on which the accused had to appear before them. The
defendant then made an oath as to his innocence, which had to be supported
by oathhelpers. If he did this, he walked free, but in a small intimate society,
his problem would be to make sure he had enough oathhelpers who believed
him and were willing to back him up. If he had a record, or had been caught
redhanded, however, this option was not open to him. Instead, witnesses to
the crime swore on oath that he was guilty. The only option then for the
accused was to accept trial by ordeal and hope that God was on his side!
A probable court site has been found under a car park at Dingwall, in the
Scottish highlands, which dates from the Viking period. The name‘Dingwall’
is thought to derive from Norse words meaning‘the place of the assembly’.
The car park covered an earth mound, levelled in the 1940s; it was used in the
eighteenth century as a burial mound for the Earl of Cromarty, marked by a
stone obelisk. Groundpenetrating radar has identified a large ditch round part
of the site, perhaps originally defining the enclosure. Further excavation is
planned to discover more information about this site.
Sentencing by the courts did not involve imprisonment–there were no
prisons in AngloSaxon England. Where people were locked up, it was just to
make sure they would appear before the court, or so they could be held while
awaiting execution. The usual penalty was a fine, the amount of which