An Anglo-Saxon Free Community

The peasants of the village formed a little society - a community. The land of the village belonged to the whole community and each villager had a right to a share of it. However, harvest, cattle, imple­ments of labour and the house with a garden round it was the villa­ger's private property.

Arable land was held by separate families. It was passed by in­heritance to the members of the family but it could not be sold or handed over to another family.

All the disputes of the community members were settled at the folk-moots. These were the meetings of the villagers who lived in one district called the «hundred». The free community members them­selves or their representatives gathered at the moots and settled matters of common interest.

The Anglo-Saxons used to have what was called Trial by Ordeal. The usual trial was as follows. When a man was accused of a crime he took an oath to say that he was innocent and he got twelve well­known people to say that he was probably speaking the truth. If he could not find twelve such people he was sent to the ordeal. The accused would have to put his bare hand and arm into boiling water, or to carry a piece of red-hot iron a certain distance. Then the hand was tied up, and at the end of four days it was untied and looked at by the elders. If it was healing, the man was considered innocent, if not, he was pronounced guilty and was punished.

The community united the peasants as they used the pastures, meadows and forests in common, cultivated the land in one and the same way according to the old customs and tackled all other pro­blems in common.