As to "wer." Now there were slaves in England in those days; at the
time of the Conquest the Domesday Book reports twenty-five thousand.
_Slaves_, I mean; not the unfree agricultural laborers, they were in a
higher class, but the regularly bound _slaves_, who were descendants,
either of the early British inhabitants or of the Saxons themselves,
who had been punished in the courts and had been sentenced into
slavery, or men who had voluntarily sold themselves into slavery. For
under early Saxon law a man could sell his child into slavery if the
child were under seven years old, and above fourteen the child could
sell himself. This refers, of course, to that; it is really a kind of
predecessor of our Thirteenth Amendment; that is, it forbids slavery;
it forbids making new slaves. The word "wer" is the word we have in
"wer-wolf," meaning blood; for instance, "weregild" is a man's blood
money. Every man had a price from the king down; if a man killed the
king he had to pay, we will say, fifty thousand pounds; if a thane,
it might be one or two thousand; if an ordinary freeman, one hundred
pounds, and so on.

CAP. 36. "Let him who takes a thief, or to whom one taken is
given, and he then lets him go, or conceals the theft, pay for
the thief according to his 'wer.' If he be an ealdorman, let him
forfeit his shire, unless the king is willing to be merciful to
him."

Now the earliest direct legislation about personal property in a
statute is as late as 1100; but this early Saxon law was a recognition
of personal property, because a man cannot steal a thing unless there
is property. This section, therefore, implies property in personalty;
because a man cannot steal land; but it never occurred to them to pass