intained whilst political institutions have ceased to exist. The
freemen of the township met to settle small questions between
themselves, under the presidency of their reeve or headman. More
important cases were brought before the hundred-moot, or meeting of
the hundred, a district which had been inhabited, or was supposed to
have been inhabited, either by a hundred kindred groups of the
original settlers or by the families of a hundred warriors. This
hundred-moot was held once a month, and was attended by four men and
the reeve from every township, and also by the Eorls and Thegns living
in the hundred. It not only settled disputes about property, but gave
judgment in criminal cases as well.

13. =Weregild.=--In early days, long before the English had left their
lands beyond the sea, it was not considered to be the business of the
community to punish crime. If any one was murdered, it was the duty of
the kinsmen of the slain man to put to death the murderer. In course
of time men got tired of the continual slaughter produced by this
arrangement, and there sprang up a system according to which the
murderer might offer to the kinsmen a sum of money known as weregild,
or the value of a man, and if this money was accepted, then peace was
made and all thought of vengeance was at an end. At a later time, at
all events after the arrival of the English in this country, charges
of murder were brought before the hundred-moot whenever the alleged
murderer and his victim lived in the same hundred. If the accused
person did not dispute the fact the moot sentenced him to pay a
weregild, the amount of which differed in proportion to the rank of
the slain man, not in proportion to the heinousness of the offence. As
there was a weregild for murder, so there was also a graduated scale
of payments for lesser offences. One who struck off a hand or a foot
could buy off vengeance at a fixed rate.

14. =Compurgation and Ordeal.=--A new difficulty was introduced when a
person who was charged with crime denied his guilt. As there were no
trained lawyers and there was no knowledge of the principles of
evidence, the accused person was required to bring twelve men to be
his compurgators--that is to say, to hear him swear to his own
innocence, and then to swear in turn that his oath was true. If he
could not find men willing to be his compurgators he could appeal to
the judgment of the gods, which was known as the Ordeal. If he could
walk blind