Anglo-Saxon law has a lot to offer. The grandiose laws of Alfred – with their translation of biblical law – inspires endless commentary about kings, God and politics in the ninth century. The homiletic laws composed by Archbishop Wulfstan for Kings Æthelred and Cnut show us a period in which law and good order was seen as closely connected to society’s fortunes in the face of viking attacks. And all law texts – from Æthelberht’s in the seventh century to Cnut’s in the eleventh – reveal rules, legal principles and procedures as well as aspects of daily life in England. They are used actively and enthusiastically by all scholars of the early Middle Ages in England.

Some texts are, however, harder to make sense of than others. We know so little about them – when they were made, what the originals looked like, why they were composed and by whom – that using them as evidence is almost impossible. Those that can be dated are shrouded in mystery in other ways (IV Edgar in Latin); and those with a seemingly more obvious purpose can’t be dated or reconstructed into their original form.

Some such texts have been relegated to marginal positions in their editions (IV Edgar Latin) and overlooked by translators. Others have been so unlucky in their naming, a legacy of nineteenth-century editors, to make it easy to overlook their significance.¹This is especially the case for the two texts I discuss here, “Alfred-Guthrum Appendix” and “II Æthelred Appendix”.

They are, however, useful texts. They show us what was possible but rarely done when writing law-texts, they show us legal minds at work and they reveal the blurry edges of the genre of the Anglo-Saxon law.

‘Alfred-Guthrum Appendix’ is perhaps the gravest example of a mismatch between an editorial name and the actual status of a text, because it is not an appendix nor originally associated with Alfred or Guthrum or their joint treaty.

More importantly, it is a unique example of a tract on a single topic of law, in this case theft, compiled from various Anglo-Saxon decrees. It contains extracts from the laws of Ine, Edward, Æthelstan and Edmund² on the topic of theft and rights and responsibilities in the justice system. The fact that it only survives as a translation in Quadripartitus – the twelfth-century translation into Latin of most Anglo-Saxon laws – means that the original is hidden from view. Nevertheless, the text is so close in wording to its sources that the original seems certainly to have been made by copying clauses from the actual texts of Ine, Edward, Æthelstan and Edmund’s laws.³

This ‘compilation on theft’ is chronologically ordered and based primarily on Ine and II Æthelstan. The first half consists mainly in extracts from Ine, which are (as far as we can tell) copied almost exactly as they appear in that text. The following extracts from II Æthelstan are treated more flexibly, with the compiler changing some words, adding detail and combining separate sentences. Lines from II Edward and III Edmund make occasional appearances, but seemingly only to add detail missing from the other sources.

So while the legal content of AGu App isn’t unknown, given that it’s taken from well-known royal decrees, the text can nevertheless shed some new light on the legal system. It suggests the existence of people who took an interest in the law and its development and it suggests that such people had access to the texts of older royal law. A text like this could certainly have been useful in practice, in court, but given that it includes much from Ine’s laws, possibly close to 300 years old at that point, it’s tempting to think it was intended for other purposes, for example studying, or that it was simply a result of specialist curiosity.

There are certainly other texts on single topics in the Anglo-Saxon legal corpus, for instance Wulfstan’s tracts or Wer and Ordal. AGu App adds to the picture outlined by these texts, suggesting access to and interest in old law.

The second text, ‘II Æthelred Appendix’ (II Atr App), is not part of II Æthelred.⁴ Again we see a misleading name hide an intriguing text. This text displays an almost unique concern for principles in the Anglo-Saxon legal corpus, offering a rare combination of procedural rules and juristic maxims. Overall, it is a detailed exposition of the practice of vouching to warranty,⁵ covering the basic process (II Atr App 8, 8.3, 9.1), practicalities of getting the warrantor (8.1, 8.3), the location of the process (8.4, 9), cases where a warrantor has died (9.2, 9.3) and other ways of proving ownership (9.4).

These run-of-the-mill regulations are often followed by unusually pithy summaries, such as ‘forðam a bið andsæc swiðere ðonne onsagu’ (‘because a denial is always stronger than an accusation’; II Atr App 9.3); ‘swunce mare se ðe þæt unriht gestreon on his handa stode ⁊ læsse se ðe ðær ariht onspræce’ (‘the trouble [should be] greater for he who stood with the unlawful gain in his hand and less for he who there claimed it rightly’; II Atr App 9); and ‘forðam agnung bið ner ðam ðe hæfð ðonne ðam ðe æftersprecð’ (‘because ownership is nearer to he who has than he who claims’; II Atr App 9.4).⁶ Another chapter summarizes the principle behind the foregoing:

Gif he cenne ofer I scira, hæbbe I wucena fyrst; gif he cenne ofer II scira, hæbbe II wucena fyrst; gyf he cenna ofer III scira, hæbbe III wucena fyrst: ofor eallswa fela scira swa he cenne, hæbbe swa fela wycena fyrst. (IV Eg 8.3)

If he can specify the county in which the man whom he vouches to warranty lives, he shall have a week’s adjournment; if he can locate him within two counties, he shall have two weeks; if within three, he shall have three weeks. The number of weeks’ adjournment granted him shall correspond to the number of counties which he names.⁷

This might not sound like much to people used to other legislative traditions, but Anglo-Saxon legislation almost never includes general statements like this. In Anglo-Saxon written law we would certainly expect to see something like the first part of this clause (‘if one county, then one week’s adjournment…’) but not the second (‘number of week’s adjournment correspond with number of counties).

Perhaps the details, the summaries and the maxims mean that the text was written by someone with a specialist interest in the topic of vouching beyond practical knowledge of current practice. The attempts at covering all eventualities could be the result of thinking through the application of a law, and the summaries could be the written manifestation of such thinking. This specialist interest could also be also betrayed by a passage that starts hwilon stod (‘it used to be’) and which then goes on to explain ‘þa geræddan witan þæt hit betere wære þæt’ (‘then the witan decided that it would be better that’). Such an explicit reference to legal change is almost as rare as the legal maxims.⁸

There’s more to be learned from these texts. Perhaps a name-change is the first step towards more recognition. I suggest a renaming of II Æthelred Appendix to ‘A tract on vouching to warranty’ and of Alfred-Guthrum Appendix to ‘A compilation on theft’.