Bretts and Scots

Bretts and Scots, THE LAWS OF THE (Lat. Leges inter Brettos et Scotos), the name given in the 13th century to a code of laws in use among the Celtic tribes in Scotland. The 'Scots' were the Celtic people dwelling in the western and more mountainous districts north of the Forth and the Clyde, who, when it became necessary to distinguish them from the Teutonic inhabitants of the low country, received the names of 'the Wild Scots,' 'the Irishry of Scotland,' and, more recently, 'the Scotch Highlanders.' The 'Bretts' were the remains of the British or Welsh people, who were at one time the sole or chief inhabitants of the region now divided into the shires of Dumbarton, Renfrew, Ayr, Lanark, Peebles, Selkirk, Roxburgh, Dumfries, and Cumberland. This province was for some centuries an independent kingdom, known by the names of 'Cumbria' and 'Strathclyde.' It became about the middle of the 10th century a tributary principality held of the king of the English, by the heir of the king of the Scots. It so continued till after the beginning of the 12th century, when Cumberland having been incorporated with England, the gradual absorption of the rest of the territory into the dominions of the king of the Scots seems to have been imperceptibly completed. The last 'Prince of Cumbria' named in record was the brother and heir of Alexander I. of Scotland, 'the Earl David,' as he was called, who, on his brother's death in 1124, himself became king of the Scots. No more is heard of Cumbria as a principality; but 'the Welsh' continue to be named among its inhabitants, in the charters of King David's grandsons—Malcolm the Maiden (1153-65), and William the Lion (1165-1214). And they seem to have retained more or less of their ancient Celtic laws until after the beginning of the 14th century. It was not until the year 1305 that an ordinance of Edward I. of England, who appeared then to have reduced all Scotland to his subjection, decreed 'that the usages of the Scots and the Bretts be abolished, and no more used.' It is unknown how far this prohibition took effect. Of the code which it proscribed, only a fragment has been preserved. It was printed by Sir John Skene, in his Regiam Majestatem (1609); and by Thomas Thomson and Cosmo Innes, in the Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, vol. i. (1844), where the laws are given in three languages—Latin, French, and English. The French version, which is the oldest, is printed from a manuscript of about 1270, formerly in the public library at Bern, in Switzerland, now in the Register House at Edinburgh. The fragment of the 'laws of the Bretts and the Scots' thus published, is of much the same nature as the ancient laws of the Anglo-Saxons, the Welsh, the Irish, and other nations of Western Europe. It fixes the cro, or price at which every man was valued, according to his degree, from the king down to the churl, and which, if he were slain, was to be paid to his kindred by the homicide or his kindred. The cro of the king was 1000 cows; of the king's son, or of an earl, 150 cows; of an earl's son, or of a thane, 100 cows; of a thane's son, 66$\backslash frac\{2\}\{3\}$ cows; of the nephew of a thane, or of an ogthiern, 44 cows and 21$\backslash frac\{2\}\{3\}$ pence; and of a villain or churl, 16 cows—all persons of lower birth than a thane's nephew or an ogthiern being accounted villains or churls. The cro of the married woman was less by a third than the cro of her husband. The cro of the unmarried woman was as much as the cro of her brother. A chapter 'of blood-drawing'—corresponding with the bloodwyte of the English—fixes the fine to be paid for a blow to the effusion of blood, according to the degree of the person wounded and the place of the wound.