as twelve for stealing as little as 12d. was later rejected as ‘too cruel’ and
the age raised to fifteen, Athelstan trusted that ‘our peace is better than
it was before.’^39
As the Wessex dynasty brought the Danes under control, peace agree-
ments with the invaders had become legislation for the internal peace of
the community. Alfred’s and Guthrum’s Peace (886 x 890) drew the
boundaries between Wessex and the Danelaw, set the wergilds of
Englishmen and Danes at the same amount, and provided that thegns
on both sides should clear themselves of accusations of crime by the
oaths of themselves and twelve of their equals. King Edward the Elder
extended these provisions, commenting that his father and Guthrum
had ‘made ordinances of secular justice according to their understand-
ing, because otherwise they could not exercise discipline over many
people or bring them to worship God as they should’. The peace that
Alfred and Guthrum had declared inviolable was still contained within
the walls of churches or specifically granted by the ruler, but in tenth-
century England the cyninges handgrid(the king’s ‘hand-given peace’)
started to grow into a landfriede(a peace over the whole land). From
Edward onwards, kings repeatedly urged their nobles and reeves to see
‘the peace of us all’ better kept. King Aethelred urged people to be
zealous about the improvement of peace and of the coinage, the repair
of boroughs in every province, and the performance of military service
whenever the king required it. King Cnut, in a letter of 1019–20 to the
people of England, acknowledged the pope’s injunction that he should
‘everywhere exalt God’s praise, and suppress injustice, and full frid
wyrcean’, and in his laws he declared that he would not allow ‘over-
bearing men’ to defend their retainers in any way they thought fit, and
required everyone to swear at the age of twelve to refrain from stealing.^40
To begin with, however, the two conquests of England in the eleventh
century, Cnut’s from Denmark and William’s from Normandy in 1066,
seem to have created conditions which fragmented peace again into the
protections given by kings and nobles to particular places and indi-
vidual servants. This is the message of the unofficial compilations of
English laws made in the twelfth century. The long popular ‘Laws of
Edward the Confessor’ (the one late Anglo-Saxon king not known to
have made any laws), which claim to have been confirmed by William
in the fourth year of his reign after consultation with juries from every
shire, start with what seems to be a version of the truce of God; entitled
in one text ‘the times and days of the king’s peace’, this was to be
80 The Spread of the Organized Peace
(^39) Liebermann, Gesetze der Angelsachsen, i. 173–83; tr. by Whitelock in EHDi. 387–91;
P. Wormald, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century, i.Legislation
and its Limits(Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 296–9, 306.
(^40) Liebermann, Gesetze de Angelsachsen, i. 126–9, 140–1, 166–7, 188–9, 208–11, 212–13,
224–5, 228–9, 242–3, 254–5, 273, 322–3: translations by Whitelock in EHDi. 380–430.