Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: I. STATUTES OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR (Stubbs Charters, p. 83-85.) Here is shown what William the king of the English, together with his princes, has established since the Conquest of England. 1. Firstly that, above all things, he wishes one God to le venerated throughout his whole kingdom, one faith of Christ always to be kept inviolate, peace and security to be observed between the English and the Normans. 2. We decree also that every free man shall affirm by a compact and an oath that, within and without England, he desires to be faithful to king William, to preserve with him his lands and his honour with all fidelity, and first to defend him against his enemies. 3. I will, moreover, that all the men whom I have brought with me, or who have come after me, shall be in my peace and quiet. And if one of them shall be slain, the lord of his murderer shall seize him within five days, if he can; but if not, he shall begin to pay to me forty- six marks of silver as long as his possessions shall hold out. But when the possessions of the lord of that man are at an end, the whole hundred in which the slaying took place shall pay in common what remains. 4. And every Frenchman who, in the time of my relative king Edward, was a sharer in England of the customs of the English, shall pay according to the law of the English what they themselves call onhlote and anscote. This decree has been confirmed in the city of Gloucester. 5. We forbid also that any live cattle be sold or bought for money except within the cities, and this before three faithful witnesses; nor even anything old without a surety and warrant. But if he do otherwise he shall pay, and shall afterwards pay a fine. 6. It was also decreed there that if a Frenchman summon an Englishman for perjury ...