Wihtred's Law Code: 695

King Wihtred (673-725) reigned over the Kingdom of Kent, the Southeastern corner of the British Isle. Wihtred's Code came out but a year after the similar but distinct Code of King Ine of Wessex. It was written in German, as was Alfred the Great's law code two hundred years later.

Evidently, Alfred held his predecessor's code in high esteem as he had it reproduced as an attachment to his Code, even though Wihtred's code was mostly of moral and religious conduct and authority. Only about one-seventh of the code sets out traditional statements of law. Canute's laws, too, were inspired by Wihtred's code.

Some examples from Wihtred's Code:

Any person accused of a crime had to find three other men of his class to swear an oath "on the altar ... to purge" the accused , else he stood convicted;

"The Church is to be free from taxation;

"The word of the bishop and the king without an oath is to be incontrovertible";

"If a man from a distance or a foreigner goes off the track, and he neither shouts nor blows a horn, he is assumed to be a thief, to be either killed or redeemed;

"Men living in illicit cohabitation are to turn to a right life with repentance of sins, or to be excluded from the fellowship of the Church;

"If a man rides on his own business on (the Sabbath), he is to pay six (shillings) to his lord, or be flogged;

"If anyone kill a man who is in the act of thieving, he is not liable to pay wergeld.

"If anyone finds a freeman with stolen goods on him, the king is to choose one of three things: he is either to be killed or sold across the sea or redeemed with his wergeld."

Fortuitously, Wehtred's law code was saved from oblivion by a document by an unknown author written in 1124 and called Textus Roffensis.

REFERENCES:

• Whitelock, D.  Editor, English Historical Documents 500-1042 (London: Routledge, 1979).
• McKitterick, R., The New Cambridge Medieval History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).