Social structures and social change in seventh-century England – the law codes and complementary sources
By John Hines, Cardiff University
In: Historical Research, Volume 86, Issue 233, pages 394–407, August 2013
DOI: 10.1111/1468-2281.12002

Even though the very early English laws are preserved only in the Textus Roffensis and Ine’s Law code only as an appendage to Alfred’s later laws it is generally believed that they represent a genuine textual tradition. However, the extent to which they should be understood as symbolic assertions of royal power or practical collections of laws which were used to guide the owners in concrete clashes has traditionally been heavily disputed. A carefully contextualized reading by John Hines of the four surviving Anglo-Saxon law codes issued in the seventh century, three from Kent and one from Wessex, shows the body of legislation they contain to be coherent and practical, and to support subtle insights into social relationships, processes of social change, and areas of social stress in that period. The importance of especially archaeological evidence, in particular that concerning the use and significance of materials and artefacts, and developments in settlement structures and the overall settlement pattern, is particularly emphasized. For instance the attention is drawn to the fact that the gold-buckle in the grave-assemblage from Sutton Hoo was made from a quantity of gold, representing 300 Kentish gold shillings corresponding to the exact “wergeld” of a nobleman.

The article is part of a collection of papers presented at a conference in Copenhagen in 2011 organised in a collaboration between three digitisation projects: “Early English Law“, “Nordic Medieval Laws” and “Relmin”.