A Source-Book of English Social History

These laws are dated A.D. 600, only three years after the coming of St. Augustine. Throughout them and the later dooms the educative effect of Christianity in its Roman form is to be traced. Hitherto law had been oral, traditional, unrecorded; these customary laws are now first reduced to written form and made permanent for the local kingdom.

(5) Compensation, already reckoned in money though not always paid in coin (cf. 59), is the customary quittance for every offence.

(9) Crime, hitherto an offence only against the victim and his kin, is here further treated as an offence against the community represented by the King.

(74, 77) Status of woman high; marriage a business contract.