Crime and Punishment_1of4_Feud Glorious Feud
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00:00No matter who you are or what you do, every aspect of your life is governed by the law.
00:08It controls where you can walk and where you can't, when you can drink and how much, how you're expected to behave in public.
00:17And yet even though it's so important, hardly any of us have got a clue how it came into being.
00:23In this series, I'm going to try and find out where our laws came from, who made them and why.
00:30I'll be on a fascinating and sometimes bizarre journey that'll take me from trials by ordeal...
00:35Imagine the damage that that would have caused to your hand.
00:39...through the decapitation of a king, to the emergence of modern democracy.
00:44Over the next four programmes, I'll see how the Normans created the first surveillance society,
00:51how today's compensation culture was started by the Anglo-Saxons...
00:55Loss of an eye? Fifty shillings, or today, £5,000.
00:59...and how a man whose body is kept in a London cupboard inspired us to stop stringing people up and start banging them up instead.
01:10The law we live with today has been 2,000 years in the making and it's still a work in progress.
01:17And though we can't assume that laws will always change for the better,
01:21at least if we know where the law came from, we can keep an eye on where it's going.
01:40The early history of our law is completely bound up with our geography.
01:46As an island nation, we've been subject to wave after wave of invaders,
01:51each of whom have brought their own way of doing things.
01:57In this programme, we're going to be looking at the first millennium AD.
02:01It's a tale of four invasions and a conquest, starting with the Romans and ending with the Normans.
02:08This is the story of a time that saw the laying down of the very foundations of English law.
02:16The first of our four invaders were the Romans.
02:19We all know the story, they built the greatest empire the world had ever seen,
02:24and everywhere they went they imposed their extraordinary culture.
02:27Great public buildings, exquisite architecture, straight roads, heated baths, drainage systems, art, literature, education.
02:37So what cornerstones of law did this epic civilization leave us with?
02:42Not much.
02:45There are three hefty tomes of Roman law, the Novelli, the Codex and the Digest.
02:51But they all come from different parts of the empire,
02:54and anyway, they're from a period long after the Romans left Britain.
02:58There isn't a single trace of any law the Romans used while they were in Britain.
03:03Not a sausage.
03:05So if the Romans didn't play a part in the creation of our legal system, who did?
03:10Well, amazingly, it comes from a time that most of us don't know anything about.
03:15It's time to light up the Dark Ages.
03:21The Dark Ages was the name given by early historians to the 600 year period after the fall of the Roman Empire,
03:28because there was so little written down to tell us what happened.
03:33But we do know now that the next group of invaders had a massive influence on our country and its laws.
03:43From around 400 AD, waves of foreign invaders started to appear on our shores,
03:49from way over there in northern Germany and southern Denmark.
03:54They had names like the Jutes and the Saxons and the Angles,
03:58but pretty soon the locals lumped them all together and just called them the Saxons,
04:03which is where we get the word Sassanach from.
04:06Of course, there'd been Saxons settling here in dribs and drabs since the Roman times,
04:12but now that the Romans had left, the numbers began to increase dramatically,
04:17and pretty soon they started sending back home not just for reinforcements,
04:22but for their wives and kids too.
04:24These guys were here to stay.
04:29It wasn't long before the Saxons controlled large swathes of eastern England,
04:34with their extended families forming rural settlements,
04:37like here, at the reconstructed Anglo-Saxon village at West Stow in Suffolk.
04:43We don't know exactly how legal matters were settled in these early days,
04:48but everything from stealing a goat right up to murder was probably decided by the head of the family.
04:54If you fell out with the family in a neighbouring village,
04:57then it was quite acceptable to take the law into your own hands and sort things out by a blood feud.
05:03The basic idea was, if anybody hurt you, you were allowed by law to hurt them back.
05:10So this is how it went. This is a real story from the north-east of England.
05:14There was this bloke called Uhtred, and he wanted to marry this girl,
05:18but the bride's father said he would only allow them to get married
05:22if, first of all, Uhtred murdered someone he hated called Therbrand.
05:28But before Uhtred could do the dirty deed, Therbrand ambushed Uhtred and killed him and 14 of his followers.
05:37And at that moment, things really kicked off, because Uhtred's family demanded revenge,
05:44so Uhtred's son murdered Therbrand,
05:47and Therbrand's family were so cross that Therbrand's son murdered Uhtred's son,
05:54and Uhtred's family were furious by now, and they killed not just Therbrand's grandchildren,
06:01but his great-grandchildren as well.
06:05And mercifully, that's where things came to a halt, after three generations and 60 years.
06:13And extraordinarily, that's how things were settled legally in Saxon times.
06:21The blood feud was probably used only in the most serious legal disputes.
06:26For everything else, the head of the family acting as local law enforcement officer was probably enough.
06:34Sorting out problems within the extended Saxon family group was clearly a pretty effective way of doing things,
06:40because it lasted for hundreds of years.
06:43But then a new influence arrived, and it cast an entirely new slant on law within this country.
06:49And once again, it came from across the sea.
06:56By the middle of the first millennium AD, England was a Saxon land.
07:01The law was sorted out by the head of the extended family group within each village.
07:06But before long, these villages started joining together to form small kingdoms,
07:11each with a king dictating his own laws.
07:14One particular king came under the influence of an outsider, who would change the whole direction of our law.
07:22In the year 597 AD, a new invader appeared from across the water.
07:28His name was St. Augustine, and he was armed not with a sword, but with a cross.
07:37Soon after St. Augustine landed in Kent, he converted the local ruler, King Athelbert,
07:43and persuaded him to do what they did on the Christian continent, write down the law.
07:48But Athelbert's law code, the very first written in English,
07:52wasn't just an Anglo-Saxon version of the Ten Commandments,
07:55things like thou shalt not kill and thou shalt not steal.
07:59It also contained huge amounts of detail about an area of the law that you might think of as quite modern.
08:05Compensation.
08:07Someone who can help translate it for us is historian Dr. Sam Newton.
08:19What is contained within this book of law?
08:22Well, as you would expect, a law code in writing building on the great precedent of the Ten Commandments,
08:27so laws against thieving and killing and adultery.
08:32But more than that, it goes on to give us fantastic detail about the various injuries that I could do to you
08:39that then I would be liable to pay you compensation for.
08:42What kind of things?
08:43Well, all sorts. For example, were I to break your arm, or as it says here,
08:51Which means?
08:52If I were to break your arm, I would be liable to pay you compensation of six shillings in old money,
08:58which is very loosely equivalent today to about £600.
09:02£600, right. Let's do this properly.
09:04Bob!
09:06That's not Bob, that's Wulfnoth. What's the Wulfnoth, Al?
09:09What's hail, Sam?
09:10Right. Wulfnoth, give us your arm. That is worth £600. What else, Sam?
09:15Okay. Were you to strike up his foot, you'd be liable for 50 shillings, loosely equivalent to £5,000.
09:22£5,000 for your foot. Can you put that on, Wulfnoth?
09:27Yep.
09:28Strike out eye or eye, 50 shillings, or today, £5,000, an eyeball.
09:33£5,000 for an eye.
09:36Loss of speech, 12 shillings or £1,200 in modern money?
09:41£1,200 for your mouth, yep.
09:45And most importantly for the male of the species, loss of marriage tackle,
09:49in Wulfnoth's case, 600 shillings, which would be £60,000.
09:54What is the Saxon for marriage tackle?
09:57Your cundilici limb, literally the limb with which one would kindle the next generation of the kin.
10:04Right. Can you stick that on your kindling limb?
10:06And the reason that is such a very high figure is that it represents the murder of the next generation.
10:12£60,000 for a kindling limb. Who will give me 65?
10:21Surprisingly, we still put values on body parts today,
10:25although modern law states a kindling limb is worth just £30,000, half the Saxon equivalent.
10:33With many thousands of claims made each year,
10:36our compensation system has become a multi-billion pound industry
10:40whose payouts can often be highly controversial.
10:45Following the 7-7 bombings in London in 2005,
10:49the government offered compensation to the hundreds of victims and families involved.
10:54But placing a meaningful value on personal injuries is a difficult and emotive issue.
11:00Examples include £3,300 for a broken leg, £110,000 for loss of sight
11:07and £250,000 for total paralysis or serious brain injury.
11:13As well as compensating for the loss of a limb,
11:16the Saxons also had amounts specified for loss of life.
11:20A system called weirgild.
11:24Weir means man, as in werewolf, and gild means money.
11:29So weirgild is the money that you have to pay if you kill a man.
11:34And if you did kill someone, you better make sure that you've got a lot of cash on you,
11:38because if you killed a king, it would cost you £12,000,
11:42which is around about £1.2 million in today's money.
11:47If you killed a thane or nobleman, it would cost you £1,200,
11:52which is about £120,000 today.
11:55If you killed a churl or peasant, that was going to be £200,
12:00which is about £20,000.
12:02And here an element of racism crops up in Anglo-Saxon law,
12:07because if you killed a Welshman, it would only cost you £60,000,
12:12which is about £6,000 today.
12:14So if you wanted to kill somebody, it would be much cheaper to kill him...
12:22..than to kill him.
12:27Before long, Christianity spread through all the Saxon kingdoms
12:31and for the first time in our history,
12:33the law was properly codified right across the land.
12:37The different Saxon kings had their own sets of written laws,
12:41which were known as dooms.
12:43For instance, King Ena of Wessex wrote,
12:46if anyone fights in the king's house, it shall be in the king's judgment
12:51whether or not he shall lose his life.
12:54Excuse me, darling.
12:55Whereas King Guthrum of East Anglia wrote,
12:59if witches or notorious adulteresses be found anywhere within the land,
13:04let them be driven from the country.
13:07And... Cheers, mate.
13:09King Edmund wrote, he who commits fornication with a nun,
13:13let him not be worthy of a consecrated burial place.
13:17So by the end of the 10th century,
13:19the Christian tradition of writing down laws
13:22had spread throughout the entire country.
13:26The arrival of Christianity brought another powerful idea.
13:31Hell.
13:32And with it, a development that's still with us today,
13:36the swearing of the religious oath.
13:39So now, when you went before the local headman,
13:43the fear of eternal damnation
13:45would put you under extra moral pressure to tell the truth.
13:49Today, if you're called in front of a court as a defendant or a witness,
13:55then the court will ask you to swear to tell the truth,
13:59the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
14:01And if you're religious,
14:02then you'll swear it on the holy book of your religion.
14:05But back in Saxon times,
14:07the religious oath was much more than simply a promise to tell the truth.
14:11It was the way the vast majority of legal disputes were resolved.
14:18The swearing of oaths would have taken place
14:21in what was known as the Hundred Court.
14:23The Hundred was the name of a Saxon area
14:26roughly equivalent to a modern parish,
14:28probably because it contained about 100 households.
14:31And these Hundred Courts
14:33were situated on prominent features in the landscape.
14:37How would this swearing of oaths actually have worked?
14:41There would have been some sort of formula,
14:44and it would be an occasion
14:46that would be undertaken in the front of others,
14:49so it would be a public event.
14:51And if you were a man of honour, that oath should be enough.
14:55OK, I want to accuse you of snogging my wife.
14:58What happens next?
15:00I would then be potentially guilty of a crime
15:03which I need to prove my innocence.
15:06An initial way would be to swear formally on oath
15:10that I am not guilty.
15:13And the formal oath would be?
15:15I would use this formula.
15:17Which means?
15:19Loosely translated, by the Lord, I am guiltless.
15:22I am not guilty, either in deed or counsel,
15:26of the charge which Tony accuses me of.
15:29Simply swearing those words was enough
15:32to settle most legal cases back in Saxon times.
15:36Sadly, fear of eternal damnation
15:39would have been the only solution.
15:42Sadly, fear of eternal damnation
15:45is not what it once was.
15:47In 1999, Tory MP Jonathan Aitken
15:50was sentenced to 18 months in prison
15:53for lying under oath in court.
15:56And a couple of years later,
15:58Geoffrey Archer got four years for the same crime.
16:01Somehow, you just know they won't be the last.
16:08In Saxon England,
16:11if a legal dispute couldn't be settled
16:13by the swearing of oaths alone,
16:15then it had to go to the next level,
16:17the church.
16:19No longer was it the place of the village head
16:22to decide the case,
16:24but instead, it was the local priest
16:26calling on the judgment of God himself.
16:29The verdict would be determined
16:31by the dreaded trial by ordeal.
16:33It was up to the accuser
16:35to choose one of three gruesome options
16:37for the defendant to face.
16:39The first trial was the trial by hot iron,
16:42which involved the accused
16:44walking nine paces
16:46carrying a lump of red hot metal.
16:48The second trial was the trial by cold water,
16:51which involved the accused
16:53being thrown into a river
16:55which had been blessed by a priest,
16:57and if they were guilty,
16:59they'd float because the water had rejected them,
17:02and if they were innocent,
17:04they would sink because the water had accepted them.
17:07Of course, they might drown as well,
17:09but that was just tough.
17:11But the third trial was the trial by boiling water.
17:17Almost any crime could see you facing trial by ordeal,
17:20from theft or forgery
17:22right up to sexual misconduct,
17:24heresy or witchcraft.
17:26And according to ancient manuscripts,
17:28there was a very particular way
17:30the trial by ordeal had to be conducted.
17:34Concerning the ordeal, this bit is very important,
17:38no man shall come within the church
17:41after the fire is borne in
17:44with which the ordeal shall be heated.
17:47In other words, somebody closes the door
17:50before they start, just like they do in a courtroom today,
17:54because once the ordeal has been set up,
17:57that's what this church has become, a courtroom.
18:01Now, if it be a single accusation,
18:05let the hand dive after the stone,
18:09up to the wrist,
18:11and if it be threefold, up to the elbow.
18:16Here it goes.
18:31Now, you may notice that I've used tongs.
18:35I didn't do it like they originally did.
18:37That's because if I had, it would have flippin' hurt.
18:40But we do have a record of someone
18:43who actually put his hand in,
18:45and it says, as soon as he put his hand in the water,
18:48immediately his flesh was melted down
18:51to the very joints of his bones and fell off.
18:55Right, that's the ordeal.
18:57Now, God's judgment.
19:01Okay, it says,
19:03let his hand be enveloped,
19:05and it be postponed till after the third day,
19:08whether it be foul or clean within the envelope.
19:12In other words, what they did was,
19:15they bandaged up the poor bloke's hand
19:18for three days,
19:20and then they put his hand in the water,
19:23and they bandaged up the poor bloke's hand for three days,
19:27and at the end of the third day,
19:30they took the bandage back off again,
19:33and if his hand had healed,
19:35then God had found him innocent,
19:37and if it was all pussy and foul and bloated,
19:41then God had found him guilty.
19:44And that was the legal procedure
19:46for stealing a sheep or something.
19:48At least the law has progressed in some areas since then.
19:53So what happened if you failed the trial by ordeal?
19:56Well, the village elder would decide on the appropriate punishment.
19:59It might be a fine or some kind of corporal punishment,
20:03but if the crime had been really serious,
20:06it meant the death penalty.
20:10In everyday Saxon life,
20:12you were never far from a physical reminder of the law,
20:15and executions, mostly in the form of hanging,
20:18were no exception.
20:21This is Wansdyke in Wiltshire,
20:23and I've come here with Dr Andrew Reynolds,
20:26an archaeologist specialising in Saxon justice,
20:29to see how the landscape itself
20:31was used to demonstrate the power of the law.
20:34So if I was an Anglo-Saxon standing up here,
20:37what would I have seen that would remind me of the presence of the law?
20:41One of the most interesting things about Anglo-Saxon judicial practice
20:44is that it uses lots of different places in the landscape
20:47to kind of form a full judicial system,
20:49and one of these locations would have been the court,
20:51where people were tried.
20:53And if you look right over there on the horizon,
20:55you can see a clump of trees in the far distance.
20:57That's the site of the judicial court, or the Hundred Meeting Place.
21:00What else?
21:01And again, well, if you look south,
21:03you can see, again, the location of another one
21:05of these judicial meeting places, or Hundred Court.
21:08OK, so we've got the Hundred Court,
21:10we've got the church in which the trial by ordeal takes place.
21:14I'm found guilty, then what?
21:16Well, if it all goes very badly and you're found guilty,
21:19you end up being taken literally to the limits of your local community,
21:22which is the Hundred, the boundary of the Hundred,
21:24and that's where we're standing at the moment.
21:26And then what happens to you?
21:28Well, you'd be hanged or decapitated.
21:30Well, I tell you what, standing up here,
21:33you realise that if someone was hung here,
21:35you'd be able to see it for 25 miles all around.
21:38Yeah, absolutely.
21:39And again, that's the whole point of having a gallows with bodies swinging from it.
21:43It's a physical and permanent expression of the power of the king.
21:47Later on, they used to punish people in the middle of market squares, didn't they?
21:51Yeah.
21:52Why in this period did they hang people on boundaries?
21:56It was a very strong sense, it seems,
21:58of literally driving people to the limit of the judicial territory,
22:01and the furthest you can drive them, of course, is to the limit of the Hundred.
22:05So burying people on the Hundred boundary
22:07is literally you physically expressing them from the community as far as you can.
22:11Of course, there's also an ideological aspect to this,
22:14and we know from a range of sources
22:16that the Anglo-Saxons thought of boundary locations
22:18as places which were marginal, liminal,
22:22inhabited by kind of malevolent creatures and monsters and so on.
22:28And as if being executed in a place inhabited by foul spirits wasn't bad enough,
22:33Saxon law was still on your case after death.
22:38The Dark Ages in this country saw a huge shift in the law,
22:42where once legal disputes had been settled by the head of the family,
22:46now they were in the hands of local kings and the Almighty.
22:52And the long arm of the law even extended into the grave.
22:57This is Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, a burial site for Saxon criminals.
23:03Following excavations here,
23:05archaeologists made a series of resin casts of some of the bodies they found.
23:13It's hard to see exactly what we've got here, Andrew.
23:15Well, what we've got here is a series of casts of the archaeological remains
23:19as they were excavated.
23:21So you can see, for example, the lower legs,
23:24the lower parts of the legs here, the upper legs here,
23:27the pelvic area here, and you can see the arm, the left arm here,
23:31there's the elbow roughly there, and the lower arm.
23:34So where's the head?
23:35Well, this is again a great indication that this is an execution burial
23:39because the cast is actually describing the limit of the grave,
23:42and you can see that the neck area is here, the head is missing from the grave.
23:47So the head should have been there,
23:49but we've actually got the grave going round there like that,
23:52so we know it's missing.
23:53What's the significance of that?
23:55Well, this is almost certainly someone who's been decapitated
23:58for committing a crime, theft, for example,
24:01is one of the main reasons why someone might be decapitated.
24:06This one, is that buried face down?
24:10It certainly is.
24:11I mean, if you look at the lower legs, for example,
24:13you can see here that the legs are bending down towards the floor of the grave here
24:18and then back up to the back of the pelvis here.
24:22And if you look at the forearms,
24:24you can see that the forearm on the right-hand side
24:27passes underneath the pelvis,
24:29and on the left here it passes underneath the pelvis also.
24:32Now, this suggests, of course,
24:33that you've got a person with the hands tied to the front of the body
24:36buried face down in the grave.
24:38Something very bleak, particularly in this landscape,
24:41of having all these people killed in different ways
24:45and buried in different ways.
24:47What's the implication of that?
24:49Well, I think the implication of it is
24:51that it wasn't just a case of summarily executing people
24:54and throwing them in the nearest ditch.
24:56The ways in which these people are buried is highly ritualised.
24:59For example, with the face down people,
25:01this is normally an indication of the fact that
25:03the people still living were terrified of this individual.
25:06We know that there was a kind of fear of the dead coming back to haunt the living.
25:10And one way to kind of solve this issue is to bury the person face down.
25:14If they come alive in the ground,
25:16the only way they can dig is down and not up.
25:18I'm usually quite relaxed about skeletons
25:21because I've seen so many through excavations.
25:24There is something very spooky about the fact that
25:27people were so scared of this person, they buried them face down.
25:30Yeah, certainly is.
25:31I mean, one wonders what offence this person committed in life.
25:35The bodies at Sutton Hoo provide a graphic example
25:38of how the Anglo-Saxons had a legal system
25:41covering all aspects of justice, from life through to death.
25:47This was a time, though, when laws were still local,
25:50with the country divided into a number of kingdoms.
25:55But the arrival of yet more outsiders
25:58would spark off the move towards a united country
26:01under one king with a single set of laws.
26:05Round about the year 780 AD, another wave of invaders arrived in England.
26:10The men from the north, the Vikings.
26:13But don't be fooled by misconceptions.
26:16The Vikings weren't just a bunch of blokes
26:20with horny helmets who raped and pillaged their way across England.
26:25They were pretty civilised, really.
26:27Most of them were farmers and settlers and traders.
26:32And they began establishing their settlements
26:35all the way down the east coast of England
26:39in what became known as the Danelaw.
26:42Law or largo is a Viking word that means fixed or set down.
26:47And the Danelaw, at its greatest extent,
26:50there's Scotland there,
26:52stretched all the way from Chester down to London.
26:57So it was a huge swathe of the country.
27:02I think I'll dig that up and sell it on eBay.
27:07The Vikings arrived in enormous numbers,
27:10sweeping down through the country.
27:12As the Danelaw expanded, absorbing kingdoms as it went,
27:16Saxon England was in danger of disappearing altogether.
27:20But one kingdom held out, Wessex,
27:23whose leader would become a legend,
27:26known to history as Alfred the Great.
27:30His dream was to create a united country.
27:34And in his drive to achieve it, he would transform our legal system.
27:39Alfred's first encounter with the Vikings was on the battlefield,
27:43but he was defeated and forced into hiding.
27:46The most famous story about Alfred
27:49occurs during the Viking advance,
27:51when things are going very badly for him
27:54and he's forced to travel around the country in disguise.
27:57And he hides in this peasant woman's hut
28:00and she asks him to keep an eye on her cakes for her
28:03because they're cooking in the fire.
28:05But he forgets because he's so bound up with his troubles
28:09and the cakes burn
28:11and the woman gives him the sharp edge of her tongue.
28:14And whether the story's true or not,
28:17it's after the alleged cake-burning incident
28:20that Alfred manages to rally his men and defeat the Vikings.
28:27In fact, he never defeated them completely,
28:30but he did manage to hold them at bay by making a truce with them.
28:34Then he did something quite extraordinary.
28:36He harnessed the law as a weapon
28:38to shore up his kingdom of Wessex against the Vikings.
28:42One of his first acts was to produce a written law code
28:46that compared him to Moses,
28:48the great biblical leader chosen by God.
28:51The implication was that Alfred's laws were handed down
28:55from the very highest authority
28:57and that the English were God's chosen people.
29:00Now, he may have thought of himself as an Old Testament prophet,
29:04but some of his ideas we think of as very modern.
29:08For instance, in his law codes,
29:10he talks about how he thinks that people should be judged.
29:14And you should know that in this context,
29:16the word doom means to judge.
29:19He says, doom very evenly.
29:22Do not doom one doom to the rich, another to the poor.
29:26Nor doom one doom to your friend, another to your foe.
29:30In other words, he's saying that everyone should be judged equally
29:34in front of the law,
29:35which is something we'd feel pretty happy about today.
29:40By creating laws like this,
29:42Alfred was determined to make Wessex
29:44a fairer and more attractive place to live in
29:47than the neighbouring Danelaw.
29:50It's all too easy to think of Alfred
29:52as the king who accidentally burnt somebody else's cakes
29:55because he was so preoccupied with defeating the Vikings.
29:59But actually, it's precisely this preoccupation with the Vikings
30:03which made him the great lawmaker he became.
30:06Because once he'd halted their advance,
30:09he became determined to build an ideological bulwark against them
30:13by creating a powerful sense of Englishness.
30:18The king now turned his attention to the way the law was enforced.
30:22Just as today we have a legal hierarchy
30:25that culminates in the European Court of Justice,
30:28so Alfred organised his courts with an appeal system
30:31that could go all the way to the top,
30:33starting with the parish or hundred court.
30:37And if you didn't like a decision from the hundred court,
30:40you'd go to the next level, the shire court,
30:43which was pretty much like the county court today.
30:47And finally, if you weren't happy with either of those two courts,
30:51you'd go to the highest court in the land, the king's court.
30:56Nowadays, of course, the British monarchy doesn't take any part
30:59in the functioning of the law courts,
31:01but back in 9th century England,
31:03King Alfred himself was the highest court in his kingdom of Wessex,
31:08and local people seemed to be entirely uninhibited
31:11about approaching him with legal problems.
31:14For instance, there's this story about this bloke called Athelhelm,
31:18who was in dispute with some other men about the ownership of some land,
31:22and they couldn't come to any conclusion,
31:24so they went to the highest court there was,
31:27they burst in on King Alfred while he was in the bathroom,
31:31and they explained to him what the problem was,
31:34and he finished washing his hands and then gave them his judgment.
31:39What a pity that Queen Elizabeth
31:41doesn't dispense hands-on legal judgment like that nowadays.
31:47Within 20 years of Alfred coming to power,
31:50any Saxon areas that hadn't been overrun by the Vikings
31:53were firmly part of his kingdom of Wessex,
31:56and yet again he used the law to consolidate that power.
32:01Alfred was well on his way to forging a united kingdom in England,
32:05but in order to do that, he had to have the loyalty of his people,
32:09so from now on, every male over the age of 12
32:12had to swear an oath of loyalty to the king.
32:15It was a powerful way of showing everyone who was in charge.
32:20Nowadays, most of us don't have to swear an oath of allegiance to the monarch,
32:25but since 2004, one group of people in the UK does.
32:30Before immigrants to this country can qualify for British citizenship,
32:34they have to take a test and answer some pretty tricky questions.
32:39This is the book you have to study if you want to become a UK citizen.
32:43It's called Life in the UK,
32:45and you have to get 75% of the answers right
32:48if you're going to pass.
32:50How would you do?
32:52How many Assembly members are there in the National Assembly of Wales?
32:58When you make an offer on a home you want to buy,
33:01why must the offer be subject to contract?
33:05How's the Speaker of the House of Commons chosen?
33:08I don't know about you, but I've lived here all my life and I'm struggling already.
33:13If applicants are successful,
33:15the final stage in becoming a citizen is to attend a special ceremony
33:19in which they swear allegiance to the Queen
33:22and promise to respect the UK's rights and freedoms.
33:25Singing the national anthem is still optional.
33:29For Alfred too, swearing allegiance was part of his ideological armoury
33:34in his struggle against the Vikings.
33:36And to ram it home, he made sure that all his documents,
33:39especially ones that concerned the law,
33:42were written in plain, simple English.
33:46In Saxon times, most people couldn't read,
33:48but because the law was written in English,
33:51at least they'd be able to understand it if it was read to them.
33:54But if Alfred insisted on clear and simple regulations a thousand years ago,
33:59how come so much gibberish is written today?
34:02Listen to this.
34:03This is the Teachers' Advanced Further Education Regulations of 1983.
34:09In these regulations, a reference to a regulation
34:12is a reference to a regulation contained therein.
34:15A reference in a regulation or the schedule to a paragraph
34:19is a reference to a paragraph of that regulation or the schedule.
34:23And a reference in a paragraph to a subparagraph
34:26is a reference to a subparagraph of that paragraph.
34:31Have you got that?
34:32King Alfred would be turning in his grave, wouldn't he?
34:36Alfred's interest in the law was almost obsessive.
34:39In a book written about him at the time, a Welsh monk called Asa
34:43described how the king would study in great detail
34:46the decisions made by his judges.
34:49And if Alfred thought the judges had made bad judgments
34:53or were ignorant of the law, he'd challenge them directly.
34:56According to Asa the monk, he said,
34:58I am astonished at this ignorance of yours.
35:02You have enjoyed the office and status of wise men,
35:05yet you have neglected the study and application of wisdom.
35:09For that reason, I command you either to relinquish immediately
35:14the offices of worldly power that you possess,
35:17or else to apply yourselves much more attentively to the pursuit of wisdom.
35:23In other words, if the judges were a bit dim or ignorant of the law,
35:27Alfred would say to them,
35:29Go back to your books and study the law properly.
35:32And the significance of this is that it's the first mention in English
35:36of anyone actually studying law.
35:40This is a huge step forward in our legal history.
35:44Alfred was an incredibly enlightened thinker
35:47who also turned his attention to some outdated legal practices.
35:53Blood feuds were still an acceptable way of settling serious disputes.
35:58If someone had killed a member of your family,
36:01it was quite okay to go straight round to their house and bump them off.
36:05But Alfred now made an inspired change to the law,
36:09so that instead of settling the score immediately,
36:12now you had to wait seven days before acting.
36:18Waiting seven days before you take your revenge is a brilliantly simple idea.
36:24It was the original cooling-off period.
36:26You let people's anger die down, and let rational thought take over.
36:37After the first day, you have to wait another seven days.
36:43After the first day, you'd probably start to think a bit more calmly,
36:48and begin to wonder if it really was worth killing the bloke who'd made you so angry.
36:54A couple of days later, you might start bumping into the person
36:58that you wanted to take your revenge on.
37:00You might even start talking to him.
37:02Hello.
37:03Hello. All right?
37:06He might even persuade you that he didn't want to hurt you in the first place.
37:13Then, before the seven days were over, you'd probably genuinely calm down
37:18and toddle off down the pub.
37:29Alfred died in 899 AD.
37:32Alfred died in 899 AD.
37:35And although the Vikings were still around,
37:37through his wise law reforms and the powerful sense of Englishness
37:41he'd instilled in his people,
37:43he'd sown the seeds of a country united under a single king.
37:48His dream was finally realised, 25 years after his death,
37:52when his grandson became the first king of all England.
37:57Our legal system had been transformed.
38:00But what happened to you if you broke Alfred's new laws?
38:03Well, that could be no fun at all.
38:07By the end of the first millennium, Saxon England was a united country
38:12with a sophisticated set of laws.
38:14But how did the state deal with people who broke those laws?
38:18These days we'd call in the boys in blue,
38:21but the idea of a national police force was still hundreds of years away.
38:26The Saxons enforced the law by mobilising the whole community
38:30using a legal device known as the hue and cry.
38:35In Saxon times, if you saw a crime being committed,
38:39then by law you had to raise the hue and cry,
38:43which essentially meant that you had to shout,
38:45Stop thief!
38:46And then everyone over the age of 15 who heard it
38:49was legally obliged to form a posse and try and catch the criminal.
38:54If they were successful, then the criminal was carted off
38:57in front of the local law official, the Reeve of the Shire,
39:01the Shire Reeve, or Sheriff, as they were known.
39:04And if you think that's ancient history, then think again.
39:08Oi!
39:09What?
39:11The idea of a sheriff raising a posse to enforce the law today
39:15is confined to Westerns.
39:17But the office of sheriff is still very much with us.
39:21Here at the judges' lodgings at Aylesbury,
39:24the High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire, Amanda Nicholson,
39:27is about to reward a local citizen, Roy Hatt,
39:30for performing a very Saxon act indeed.
39:34In King Alfred's day, the sheriff was a formidable
39:37and much feared law enforcer with unrivalled local powers.
39:41These days, the job's a little less taxing.
39:45What sort of things do you have to do?
39:48I think, basically, we have to say thank you to people
39:51who've been working really hard.
39:53And there are some marvellous people that you meet.
39:56What sort of things have you actually enjoyed doing most?
39:59Well, there's been such a variety.
40:01I mean, I did not expect to have a trip behind the scenes
40:05at the crematorium for a start.
40:07And I've been round lots of hospitals, I've been to prisons,
40:11and there's also citizenship ceremonies for admitting citizens
40:16to make a speech, shake their hands,
40:18and say congratulations on becoming British.
40:20And the ceremony you're performing today
40:22really is a link with the law, isn't it?
40:24Well, yes. I mean, this is excellent.
40:26Mr Hatt has been awarded by the courts
40:31and I will give him a certificate,
40:33which is enormously exciting and very, very worthwhile.
40:36So you'll be representing the court by giving him this award?
40:39Yes.
40:41Roy Hatt is the reason for today's ceremony
40:44because when he was out shopping one day with his missus,
40:46he came to the aid of local police on the trail of a fleeing criminal.
40:51All of a sudden we heard this shouting,
40:53Police! Stop! Police! Stop!
40:56And of course I looked round
40:58and this great big hefty chap coming charging towards me.
41:02And, well, instinct told me, you know, try and stop him.
41:07Which I did.
41:09What did your wife think?
41:10Well, she was shouting, Stop Roy! Stop Roy!
41:14Everybody's going to stop me.
41:18And did you have any doubt about it or did you just go in?
41:20Instinct. It was instinct. Completely instinct.
41:24So did he fall over?
41:25No. No, I pushed him into the wall, the side,
41:29which slowed him down.
41:31Sufficient for the police to actually stop him.
41:34You're a have-a-go hero, aren't you?
41:36I am, aren't I? Or a fool.
41:38Good luck.
41:39Thanks a lot, Tony.
41:40Cheers.
41:44Certainly.
41:49Many congratulations and thank you so much for what you did.
41:52It was terrific. Very, very brave indeed.
41:56This is the judge's citation.
41:59He said,
42:00Many people would have remained frozen to the spot
42:03or moved out of the way
42:05when they saw this big burly thief running towards them.
42:08Roy Hatt did not.
42:12So there is a perfect Anglo-Saxon ceremony.
42:16You've got the reeve of the shire
42:18congratulating the man who responded to the hue and cry.
42:28But what happened if a criminal escaped the hue and cry
42:31and evaded capture altogether?
42:33Then he would become ut lagu, outside the law.
42:39But forget the glamour of Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest.
42:42Being an outlaw in Saxon England was pretty grim.
42:48Being branded an outlaw meant you were literally outside the law.
42:52The law no longer controlled you.
42:54But that meant it no longer protected you either.
42:57Your land and property were forfeit to the king
43:00and you could be forced to live in hiding.
43:04If an outlaw was found by other law-abiding citizens
43:08they could do anything they liked with him
43:10and the law would turn a blind eye.
43:13He was totally outside normal society.
43:16Not just an outlaw, but a social outcast.
43:21It was possible for a repentant outlaw
43:24to return to the protection of the law by becoming in law.
43:28He'd have to stand trial for a second time
43:30but if he was found innocent he'd be declared a new person.
43:34Although he'd already lost all his land and property
43:37and there was no hope of getting that back again.
43:39So forget the romance of being an outlaw.
43:42If you're an outlaw in Anglo-Saxon times
43:45you didn't have very much fun at all.
43:49So there you have it. England.
43:52A united country created by the Anglo-Saxons
43:55with a fair set of laws and a sense of Englishness
43:58that's still with us today.
44:00And that might seem like an obvious place to end
44:03this first part of our story of the law.
44:05But there's one piece of evidence that suggests
44:08the Saxons might have been the first people
44:10to use one of the most important institutions in legal history,
44:14the jury.
44:17The story goes something like this.
44:19One year in the 10th century in North Wales
44:22there was a terrible drought.
44:24In fact it was so bad that it looked as though
44:26all the crops would fail.
44:28And there was a local noblewoman called Lady Troust
44:31who went into the church to pray for rain.
44:34And high up in the roof of the church
44:36there was this statue of the Virgin Mary holding a cross.
44:40So Lady Troust is praying away like this
44:42when suddenly, crash!
44:44The cross slips out of the Virgin Mary's hands,
44:47bashes Lady Troust on the head and she dies.
44:51And there's an incredible furore in the village.
44:55Everyone is complaining.
44:56They're all saying it was the statue's fault.
44:59The statue killed Lady Troust.
45:01So what did they do?
45:03What did they do?
45:04They got a jury together.
45:06And I know this isn't a proper manuscript
45:08but this is a genuine quote.
45:10They got a jury of 12 people,
45:12Hincot of Hancot,
45:14Span of Mancot,
45:15Leech and Leech and Cumberbeach,
45:17Pete and Pate with Corbyn of the Gate,
45:20Milling and Hewitt with Gill and Pewitt.
45:23And these 12 jurors decided
45:25that the statue was guilty of murder
45:28and it should be hung.
45:30Until one of the jurors said,
45:32Look, don't be daft.
45:33You can't hang a statue.
45:35There's a drought on.
45:37Let's drown it instead.
45:39And that is what they did.
45:42They chucked it in the river.
45:47The figure floated downstream
45:49where it was washed up in the local town
45:51which is possibly what's now Chester.
45:53The locals picked up the statue
45:55which is described as being drowned and dead
45:58and they buried it.
46:01Now all this might be nothing more
46:03than a made up story
46:04told by the people of Chester
46:06about their Welsh neighbours.
46:08But if the story's true,
46:09what about those 12 men
46:11who found the statue guilty?
46:13It's just possible
46:15that they were the first ever jury.
46:17Something that wouldn't become
46:19an established part of our legal system
46:21for another 200 years.
46:23So in terms of the law,
46:25maybe the Dark Ages weren't so dark after all.
46:29The Anglo-Saxons had created
46:31a sophisticated system of courts and appeals.
46:34They had legal professionals like sheriffs
46:37and a much less grisly attitude
46:39towards things like blood feuds.
46:41Not only that,
46:42but their laws were being written down
46:44in plain English.
46:46If only things had stayed like that.
46:49Next time, the law gets medieval.
46:52I'll see how guilt was decided
46:54by the burning of flesh,
46:56stinking vegetables,
46:57the importance of farm produce
46:59in the execution of the law,
47:01and how certain Norman punishments
47:03are still with us today.
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