King's peace.

2) If he values the goodwill of the town itself, he shall pay
us thirty shillings as compensation, if the King will grant us
this concession."

5. No base coin or coin defective in quality or weight, foreign or
English, may be used by a foreigner or an Englishman. (In 956, a
person found guilty of illicit coining was punished by loss of a
hand.)

- Judicial Procedure -

There were courts for different geographical communities. The
arrangement of the whole kingdom into shires was completed by 975
after being united under King Edgar.

A shire was a larger area of land, headed by an earl. A shire
reeve or "sheriff" represented the royal interests in the shires
and in the shire courts. This officer came to be selected by the
king and earl of the shire to be a judicial and financial deputy
of the earl and to execute the law. The office of sheriff, which
was not hereditary, was also responsible for the administration of
royal lands and royal accounts. The sheriff summoned the freemen
holding land in the shire, four men selected by each community or
township, and all public officers to meet twice a year at their
"shiremote". Actually only the great lords - the bishops, earls,
and thegns - attended. The shire court was primarily concerned
with issues of the larger landholders. Here the freemen
interpreted the customary law of the locality. The earl declared
the secular law and the bishop declared the spiritual law. They
also declared the sentence of the judges. The earl usually took a
third of the profits, such as fines and forfeits, of the shire
court, and the bishop took a share. In time, the earls each came
to supervise several shires and the sheriff became head of the
shire and assumed the earl's duties there, such as heading the
county fyrd. The shire court also heard cases which had been
refused justice at the hundredmote and cases of keeping the peace
of the shire.

The hundred was a division of the shire, having come to refer to a
geographical area rather than a number of households. The monthly
hundredmote could be attended by any freeman holding land (or a
lord's steward), but was usually attended only by reeve, thegns,
parish priest, and four representatives selected by each agrarian
community or village - usually villeins. Here transfers of land
were witnessed. A reeve, sometimes the sheriff, presided over
local criminal and peace and order iss