The History of English Law before the Time of Edward I. Frederic William Maitland

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Название The History of English Law before the Time of Edward I
Автор произведения Frederic William Maitland
Жанр Юриспруденция, право
Серия
Издательство Юриспруденция, право
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781614871774



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without risk of blood-feud. In like manner homicide was excusable when the slayer was fighting in defence of his lord, or of a man whose lord he was, or of his kinsman; but a man must in no case fight against his own lord.90 A man who slew a thief (or, it would seem, any one) was expected to declare the fact without delay, otherwise the dead man’s kindred might clear his fame by their oath and require the slayer to pay wergild as for a true man.91 We do not find any formalities prescribed in the genuine dooms. The safest course would no doubt be to report to the first credible person met with, and to the first accessible person having any sort of authority.92

      Fire, which English law has regarded for several centuries as a specially dangerous thing in this sense, and which is dealt with in some of the early Germanic dooms, is not mentioned for this purpose in our documents.100 Liability for damage done by dogs is on the other hand rather elaborately dealt with by a scale of compensation increasing after the first bite.101

      There are traces of the idea which underlay the Roman noxal actions, and which crops up in the medieval rule of deodand, that where a man is killed by accident, the immediate cause of death, be it animate or inanimate, is to be handed over to the avenger of blood as a guilty thing. When men were at work together in a forest, and by misadventure one let a tree fall on another, which killed him, the tree belonged to the dead man’s kinsfolk if they took it away within thirty days.102 This kind of accident is still quite well known in the forest countries of Europe, as witness the rude memorial pictures, entreating the passer’s prayers, that may be seen in any Tyrolese valley. Also a man whose beast wounded another might surrender the beast as an alternative for money compensation.103