The penalties inflicted by these courts consisted chiefly of fines.
Each man's life had a certain "wergild" or money value. The fine for
the murder of a man of very high rank was 2400 shillings; that of a
simple freeman was only one twelfth as much.
A slave could neither testify in court nor be punished by the court;
for the man in that day who held no land had no rights. If a slave
was convicted of crime, his master paid the fine, and then flogged him
until he had got his money's worth out of him. Treason was punished
with death, and common scolds were ducked in a pond until they were
glad to hold their tongues. These methods of administering justice
were crude, but they had the great merit of being effective. They
aimed to do two very necessary things: first, to protect the community
against dangerous criminals; secondly, to teach those criminals that
"the way of the transgressor is hard."