Anglo-Saxon Institutions. 449-1066 19
efforts of society to protect itself. This was the institu-
tion later called the hue and cry, and it may have been
called that or something very similar by the Anglo-Saxons.
When the cry was raised by someone who had suffered
violence or who saw evidence of a crime committed, as in
finding a dead body, the neighbours must join in pursuit
wherever the track seemed to lead, and if it led into
another township that township was expected to help.
Evidence of this institution appears first in the written
laws under Athelstan, and then much more clearly in
Edgar's Ordinance of the Hundred, where the co-operation
of even such large units as the hundreds was commanded.
Though it here emerges in written law, and the Ordinance
contained an important regulation of the custom, there
are indications of its much greater antiquity, especially
on the continent. The element of suretyship, the holding
of a man to his appearance in court, his discharging a fine
or other obligation, was something that in early times
rested with the kin. But when kin were few or wholly
lacking, there was an effort to place the obligation else-
where, perhaps sometimes upon a man's companions in
arms; later, after Christianity through its condemnation
of feuds and its insistence on individual responsibility
had weakened the tie of kin, the hundred was occasionally
held responsible; more often, after commendation was
frequent, a man's lord.1 But some notion of kin respon-
sibility remained long and perhaps usefully in the realm
of police functions.
The summoning of the defendant to court was done, not
by an officer, but by the plaintiff himself, who had to be
very careful, however, to do it in the prescribed manner
and at a certain length of time before the meeting of the
court. The summons was often ineffective, and the
courts had a great deal of trouble in making their author-
ity felt, especially in getting criminals before them. The
imposition of fines (usually in cattle and in this connection
constituting a kind of regulated distress upon the man or
1 On the later history of suretyship, see below, pp. 67-69 and 109, HO.