has a local and even a vernacular aspect. Slight as these traces may be,
they are interesting enough to merit consideration.

In the Kentish laws are preserved our oldest extant relics of ancestral
custom. The first code is that of Æthelberht, with this title:--"This be
the Dooms that Æthelbriht, king, ordained in Augustine's days." It is
much concerned with penalties for personal injuries. These are some of
the "Dooms":--

Cap. 40. If an ear be smitten off, 6 shillings amends (bôt).

" 41. If the ear be pierced through, 3 shillings.

" 43. If an eye is lost, 50 shillings.

" 44. If mouth or eye be damaged, 12 shillings.

" 45. If the nose be pierced, 9 shillings.

" 51. For the four front teeth, 6 shillings each; the tooth
that stands next, 4 shillings; the next to that, 3
shillings; and thenceforth, each, 1 shilling.

Penalties for theft are graduated according to the quality of the person
injured, _i.e._, according to the different orders of men in the body
politic, each of whom has a separate value: king, noble, freeman, serf,
slave. Such we may suppose to have been the primitive institutes of the
tribes in the old mother country on the Continent. But the code is
headed by a captel, in which the property of the Church is valued beyond
that of the king, and the same applies to the higher clergy. "Cap. 1.