y wild
beasts caught in snares or brought to bay. A wounded stag belongs to the
man who has wounded it for twenty-four hours: but after that to anyone.
Tame deer, it is observable, are kept; and to kill a doe or fawn costs
6s., to kill a buck, 12s. Tame hawks, cranes, and swans, if taken in
snares, cost 6s. But any man may take flying hawks out of his
neighbour's wood, but not out of the Gaias Regis, the king's gehage,
haies, hedges, or enclosed parks.

And now, I have but one more law to mention--would God that it had been
in force in later centuries--

'Let no one presume to kill another man's aldia or ancilla, as a striga,
witch, which is called masca; because it is not to be believed by
Christian minds, that a woman can eat up a live man from within; and if
any one does so he shall pay 60s. as her price, and for his fault, half
to her master, and half to the king.'

This last strange law forces on us a serious question, one which may have
been suggesting itself to you throughout my lecture. If these were the
old Teutonic laws, this the old Teutonic liberty, the respect for man as
man, for woman as woman, whence came the opposite element? How is it
that these liberties have been lost throughout almost all Europe? How is
it that a system of law prevailed over the whole continent, up to the
French revolution, and prevails still in too many countries, the very
opposite of all this?

I am afraid that I must answer, Mainly through the influence of the Roman
clergy during the middle age.

The original difference of race between the clergy and the Teutonic
conquerors, which I have already pointed out to you, had a curious
effect, which lingers to this day. It placed the Church in antagonism,
more or less open, to the civil administration of justice. The criminal
was looked on by the priest rather as a sufferer to be delivered, than an
offender to be punished. All who are conversant with the lives of saints
must recollect cases in which the saint performs even miracles on behalf
of the condemned. Mediaeval tales are full of instances of the same
feeling which prompted the Italian brigands, even in our own times, to
carry a leaden saint's image in his hat as a safeguard. In an old French
fabliau, for instance, we read how a certain highway-robber was always
careful to address his prayers to the Blessed Virgin, before going out to
murder and steal; and found the practice pay him well. For when he was
taken an