The Wool-Sack. question of guilt was decided, according to the character of the accused, by lad (compur gation) or by iirtheil (ordeal). If the accused was of good character and " oathworthy," he was entitled to the lad; if the lad failed ("the oath burst"), or he was tiht bysig (of bad character), he was obliged to go to the urtheil, or ordeal. The character of the accused was, there fore, in each instance a preliminary question, and the form of trial was fixed by that deter mination. Where the accused was found "oathworthy," he was " led to the plea " by his borh,1 who had to swear the accused had not been convicted since a certain time.2 In some cases oath was also required of " two true thanes of the hundred, or the reeve," 1 A law of yEthelstan provides that the Lord or the lord's steward " should answer for all his men." yiithel., ii; Thorpe, i, 217. 2 Under Ethelred the oath was " that he has not failed neither in oath nor ordeal since the gemot was at Bromdun." Ethel., i, 1 Thorpe, i, 281. Under Cnut, "since the gemot was at Winchester." Cnut, ii; Thorpe, i, 393.
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that the accused had not paid tliicf-gild. The accused was then entitled to choose whether he would have a " single ordeal " or a " poundworth oath within the three hundreds for above xxx pence." 3 The single ordeal was handling a piece of red-hot iron of a pound's weight, or plunging the hand up to the wrist in boiling water. What was a "pound-worth oath," how many witnesses it required, or how it was determined who the witnesses were to be, are matters all specific knowledge of which has been completely lost, — were matters depending upon the custom of the time and were never incorporated into any of the early systems of written law. It does appear, however, that whatever may have been the number of witnesses, how deter mined upon, or from whence drawn, the lad or compurgators swore not to particular facts, but merely in general terms to their belief in the innocence of the accused. 3 See Cnut, ii, 30; Thorpe, i, 393.
THE WOOL-SACK AND WOOLENS IN THE REIGNS OF THE EARLIER EDWARDS. Bv L. G. Smith. WE are prone in these days to slap each other on the back in congratulation at the improvement we have made in the methods of our ancestors. Perhaps those ancient worthies were somewhat " slow "com pared with our modern rush, but a study of their laws will certainly demonstrate that they were usually correspondingly " sure." Adulteration, that curse of the present age, was then strictly barred out. "Oleo" did not masquerade as the best creamery butter; a nutmeg was a nutmeg, not a lump of cunningly carved wood; cinnamon was cinnamon, not sawdust; and a middle-aged hen would have blushed at the insinuation
that all the eggs on the market were not produced by her kind, but, instead, might be the cleverly constructed artificial product of a degenerate inventor, warranted to do every thing the original could do, except hatch and cackle. The wool-sack, in the early days in Eng land, kept a particularly protecting eye over the cloth manufacture. The Romans prob ably taught the Britons the crude art of us ing the hand loom, but up to the time of the Norman conquest the clothing of the com mon folk of the Isle was chiefly of leather, all fine cloths having been imported from the continent. Under the immediate successors
