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Slave raiding and slave trading in early England
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 September 2008
Extract
Slaves were an integral and numerically important part of English society in the Anglo-Saxon period. They appear in the earliest English law code promulgated between 597 and 616 by Æthelberht of Kent; nearly half a millennium later at the beginning of the Norman age their continued widespread presence in English society is attested by Domesday Book. Yet they do not seem to have excited much attention from scholars. The longest treatment in print remains that by Kemble, which was written over a century ago. Stenton in his magisterial survey of Anglo-Saxon England made only four references to them. Some other recent histories, however, have discussed slavery in more detail. Professor Whitelock rightly included slaves in her analysis of the social classes of England up to the time of the Norman Conquest. H. P. R. Finberg took this further in his agrarian history of Anglo-Saxon England by dividing the society into three chronological periods and examining the regional variations within England during those periods. Both works mention the slave trade. This receives a more detailed discussion in H. R. Loyn's economic and social history. But the evidence on slavery in England is mostly fragmentary and in widely scattered sources. Inevitably general histories of the period but skim the surface. Only by patiently assembling all the evidence, as Professor Verlinden has been doing for many years in his studies on slavery in continental Europe, can knowledge about this significant element in English society be advanced.
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References
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89 V Æthelred 2, VI Æthelred 9, VII Æthelred 5 and II Cnut 3. The first two clauses perhaps imply that it was still permissible to sell persons guilty of crime out of the country, but no exceptions are made in the later codes. On Wulfstan's rôle in these codes, see Whitelock, D., ‘Wulfstan and the Laws of Cnut’, EHR 63 (1948), 444–52Google Scholar, and ‘Wulfstan's Authorship of Cnut's Laws’, EHR 70 (1955), 72–85Google Scholar; Sisam, K., Studies in the History of Old English Literature (Oxford, 1953), pp. 278–87Google Scholar; and A Wulfstan Manuscript, containing Institutes, Laws and Homilies: British Museum Cotton Nero A. 1, ed. H. R. Loyn, EEMF 17 (Copenhagen, 1971), 48–9.Google Scholar
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96 ASC 1055 C.
97 ASC 1081 E.
98 ASC 1079 E.
99 The disappearance of slavery from England was a complex process. For a discussion, see Loyn, , Anglo-Saxon England and the Norman Conquest, pp. 350–1Google Scholar, and Pelteret, ‘Late Anglo-Saxon Slavery’, pp. 384–90.
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101 As D. Whitelock points out (EHD no. 166), her ransom money was equivalent to the wergeld of a person of the highest status in Kent.
102 Exon Domesday I731; the figure in the Exchequer version is slightly lower.
103 See the letters cited above, n. 56.
104 E.g. Pope Gregory III, in a letter written in 732, condemned the practice and prescribed a penance equivalent to that for homicide: Die Briefe des Heiligen Bonifatius und Lullus no. 28, lines 18–23.
105 VII Æthelred 5 in particular implies that penitential discipline should be imposed. The sale of men abroad is condemned also in a handbook for the use of a confessor which its editor considers Wulfstan might have had compiled. See Fowler, R., ‘A Late Old English Handbook for the Use of a Confessor’, Anglia 83 (1965), 12 and 26Google Scholar. On the general relationship between penitential discipline and Anglo-Saxon law, see Oakley, T. P., English Penitential Discipline and Anglo-Saxon Law in their joint Influence, Stud. in Hist., Economics and Public Law edited by the Faculty of Political Science of Columbia Univ. 107.2 (New York, 1933).Google Scholar
106 Cf. G. E. M. de Ste Croix's observation, ‘I know of no general, outright condemnation of slavery inspired by a Christian outlook, before the petition of the mennonites of Germantown in Pennsylvania in 1688’, ‘Early Christian Attitudes to Property and Slavery’, Church Society and Politics, ed. Derek Baker, Stud. in Church Hist. 12 (Oxford, 1975), 24Google Scholar. Even A. W. Rupprecht, an evangelical Christian apologist, does not claim that the early Fathers ever sought the abolition of slavery (‘Attitudes on Slavery among the Church Fathers’, New Dimensions in New Testament Study, ed. R. N. Longenecker and M. C. Tenney (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1974), pp. 261–77Google Scholar). For the views of the early and medieval church, see also Logan, R. W., ‘The Attitude of the Church toward Slavery prior to 1500’, Jnl of Negro Hist. 17 (1932), 466–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Davis, , The Problem of Slavery, pp. 83–106.Google Scholar
107 ‘You might well groan to see the long rows of young men and maidens whose beauty and youth might move the pity of the savage, bound together with cords, and brought to market to be sold’ The Vita Wulfstani of William of Malmesbury 11.20, ed. R. R. Darlington, Camden Soc. 3rd ser. 40 (London, 1928), 43–4Google Scholar (text); Life of St Wulstan, Bishop of Worcester trans. J. H. F. Peile (Oxford, 1934), pp. 64–5Google Scholar (translation).
108 De Gestis Regum Anglorum in.269, p. 329.
109 This was the amount paid at Lewes according to Domesday Book 26r. The same amount was paid on a woman bought and subsequently released at Bodmin: text, Förster, M., ‘Die Freilassungsurkunden des Bodmin-Evangeliars’, A Grammatical Miscellany offered to Otto Jespersen, ed. N., Bøgholm, Brussendorff, A. and Bodelsen, C. A. (Copenhagen, 1930), p. 91Google Scholar, no. xxx.
110 Willelmi I articuli X. 9, Liebermann, , Gesetze 1, 488Google Scholar (text); English Historical Documents II: 1042–1189, ed. D. C. Douglas and G. W. Greenaway (London, 1953), no. 18 p. 400Google Scholar (translation).
111 ‘That no one is henceforth to presume to carry on that shameful trading whereby heretofore men used in England to be sold like brute beasts.’ Eadmer, , Historia Novorum in Anglia, ed. Rule, M., RS 81 (London, 1884), 143Google Scholar (text); Eadmer's History of Recent Events in England, trans. G. Bosanquet (London, 1964), p. 152Google Scholar (translation). The paragraph division is that given Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, ed. D. Wilkins (London, 1737) 1, 383.Google Scholar
112 De Gestis Regis Stepbani, Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard 1, ed. R. Howlett, RS 82.3 (London, 1884), 156.Google Scholar
113 The Annals of Loch Cé, s.a.1138, ed. and trans. W. M. Hennessy, RS 541 (London, 1871), 139Google Scholar. Hennessy's interpretation (p. 138, n. 3) of the Irish phrase as referring to ‘the north of England, or Northumberland’ seems a little imprecise.
114 Monachus, Hermannus, De Miraculis Sanctae Mariae Laudunensis xxi, Migne, Patrilogia Latina 156 (Paris, 1880Google Scholar), cols. 985–6. Cf. also the opening words of the Liber Landavensis, compiled in the first third of the twelfth century: ‘Fuit vir, Aggligena natione, Elgarus, natus regione Devunsira, et captus in infantia a piratarum classe, ut solito more, ductus in captivitatem in Hiberniam, et ibi ducens servilem vitam per tempora…’ (‘There was a man named Elgar, a native of England, and born in Devonshire, who, in his infancy, was taken prisoner by a set of pirates, and as was usual, conveyed to Ireland, where for some time he led a servile life’). The Text of the Book of Llan Dâv reproduced from the Gwysaney Manuscript, ed. I. G. Evans, Ser. of Old Welsh Texts 4 (Oxford, 1893), 1Google Scholar (text); The Liber Landavensis, ed. and trans. W. J. Rees (Llandovery, 1840), p. 3Google Scholar (translation). Unfortunately it is not clear whether ‘ut solito more’ refers to the time of the writer or to the unspecified time in the past when Elgar lived. On slavery in Ireland in the twelfth century, see Smyth, , Scandinavian Kings, p. 156.Google Scholar
115 See Orpen, G. H., Ireland under the Normans 1 (Oxford, 1911), 141Google Scholar ff.
116 Expugnatio Hibernica 1.18, Opera, ed. J. F. Dimock, RS 21.5 (London, 1867), 258.Google Scholar
117 On Henry II and Ireland, see Warren, W. L., Henry II (London, 1973), pp. 194–206.Google Scholar
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