Concerning the Mercian Oath, early-11th-century

Several codes within Textus Roffensis provide information on the payment of wergild (the legal value set on a person’s life according to rank) within Mercian society.

The title is based on the rubric in the Cambridge manuscript, Corpus Christi College, MS 201, p. 102. This short legal tract is essentially an extract from a larger one composed, most likely, by Wulfstan, archbishop of York (r. 1002–23). However, Wulfstan added the clause comparing oaths of mass-priests and thegns and also the clause mentioning ‘the seven orders of the church’ to earlier Mercian material which forms the clause concerning the ‘twelfth-hundred man’, and which may date to as early as the ninth-century. See Patrick Wormald, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century, vol. 1 (Blackwell, 1999), pp. 392–94.

The text was copied by the principal scribe of Textus Roffensis, who completed his work around 1123.

Transcription

39v (select folio number to open facsimile)

_Mæssepreostes að, ⁊ woruldþegenes is on En-
gla lage geteald efendyre.⁊ for þam seofon
cyrichadan þe se mæssepreost þurh Godes
gife geþeah þæt he hæfde he bið þegenrihtes
wyrþe. _Twelfhyndes mannes að, forstent vi ceorla aþ,
for ðam gif man þone twelfhyndan >man< wrecan
sceolde, he bið full wrecen on syx ceorlan, ⁊ his
wergyld bið vi ceorla wergyld.

Translation

An oath of a mass-priest and of a worldly thegn is in English law reckoned as equally dear.

And because the mass-priest received what he had through God’s gift of the seven orders of the church, he will have the rights of a thegn.

An oath of a twelve-hundred man is equal to an oath of six ceorls,¹ because if one should avenge the twelve-hundred man, he will be fully avenged on six ceorls, and his wergild is the wergild of six ceorls.

Footnotes

1 A ceorl (or ‘churl’) was a freeman of the lowest order. This text refers to a king’s wergild and therefore can be seen as old-fashioned, as kings in Mercia had long ceased by the time Wulfstan either wrote or emended the law-code, the last king being Ceolwulf II who died in 879.