8 - Mutilation and Spectacle in Anglo-Saxon Legislation

Summary

This chapter explores a particular type of corporal punishment, one that has elements unique to later Anglo-Saxon England. It makes its first appearance in the Grately code of King Æthelstan, likely promulgated in the late 920s. This punishment, which targeted minters who struck coins in an unauthorized fashion, is found in a section that appears to have been part of an earlier code that had been incorporated into the Grately edict. Denoted as clause 14.1 in its modern edition, the law states:

If a moneyer is found guilty, let the hand with which he performed the crime be cut off, and set up on the mint. If there is a charge and he wishes to clear himself, then he shall go to the hot iron and clear the hand with which he is accused of performing the evil. If he then is found guilty at that ordeal, do the same as is said here before.

The same condign justice is directed towards those minting debased coins in the code now known, rather misleadingly, as IV Æthelred, conventionally dated to the early 990s. Clause 5.3 decrees, with regard to those who produce coins that are either of impure metal or deficient weight: ‘And they have ordained that moneyers shall lose a hand and that it shall be set up over that mint.’

In arranging for the display of the severed hand, these two clauses added a new aspect to an established form of punishment. Judicially sanctioned mutilation, in the form of the amputation of a thief’s hand, first appeared in the Anglo-Saxon law codes at the end of the ninth century in Alfred’s domboc, both in his own laws and in those which he attributes to his predecessor Ine. Provisions for such mutilations became both more varied and more frequent in the legislation of the later tenth and early eleventh centuries, eventually incorporating the foot, tongue, nose, ears, upper lip, and scalp and dealing with crimes as varied as swearing falsely, adultery and, most commonly, theft.

A rationale for these multiple prescriptions for bodily disfigurement is found in the laws of Cnut, which state: ‘thus one might punish and at the same time preserve the soul.