It He Bequeathed, c.975-c.1025 AD

Hit becwæð (‘It he bequeathed’), a formula for asserting the right to hold bequeathed land, c. 975–c.1025¹. Textus Roffensis ff. 95r–95v. Translated from Old English and edited by Dr Christopher Monk.

Transcription

95r (select folio number to open facsimile)

_hit becwæð, ⁊ becwæl
se ðe hit ahte mid fullan folcrihte swa swa

95v

hit his yldran mid feo, ⁊ mid feore rihte begea-
tan, ⁊ letan, ⁊ læfdan ðam to gewealde ðe hy
wel uðan, ⁊ >swa< ic hit hæbbe swa hit se sealde þe to
syllanne ahte unbryde, ⁊ unforboden, ⁊ ic
agnian wylle to agenre æhte ðæt ðæt ic hæb-
be, ⁊ næfre ðæt yntan ne plot, ne ploh, ne turf,
ne toft, ne furh, ne fotmæl, ne land, ne læse, ne
fersc, ne mersc,² ne ruhnerum, wudes ne feldes,
landes ne strandes wealtes, ne wæteres, butan
ðæt læste ða hwile ðe ic libbe, forþam nise tinan
on life ðe æfre gehyrde ðæt man cwydde oððon
crafode hine on hundrede oððon ahwar on ge-
mote on ceapstowe oþþe on cyricware ða hwile þe
he lifde unsac he wæs on life beo on legere swa swa
he mote, do swa ic lære beo ðe be þinum, ⁊ læt ine
be minum ne gyrne ic ðines ne læðes ne landes,
ne sace ne socne, ne ðu mines ne ðærft ne myn-
te ic ðe nan ðing.

Translation

See Translation Notes

It he bequeathed,³ and he died: he who owned it with full folk-right,⁴ just as his ancestors obtained it with cattle and with life-right, and allotted and left it to his keeping, which they granted well. And so I have it just as he who owned the right to give gave it, both honestly and lawfully. And I wish to own that which I have as my own property, and never to intend for you anything,⁵ not plot or ploughland, turf or toft,⁶ furrow or footmark, land or pasture, freshwater or marsh land, clearing, wood or field, of land or of shore, of woodland or of water, but that it may last as long as I live. For there is not a tithing-man⁷ alive who has ever heard that it was claimed or craved, in a hundred-court or any other meeting, in a market-place or at church, for the time he was alive:⁸ guiltless he was in life; let him be so in death, as he must. Do as I instruct: you be with yours and leave me to mine; I do not desire what is yours, not lea or land, sake or soke,⁹ and you do not need what is mine, nor do I intend to leave you anything.¹⁰

Footnotes

1 This text is anonymous and undated; however, scholars suggest a date of composition between the late tenth and early eleventh centuries; see http://www.earlyenglishlaws.ac.uk/laws/texts/becw/ [accessed 14.02.2018].

2 ‘It’: in context, a piece of land.

3 Folk-right, the right of customary law.

4 ‘never to intend for you’, translating ‘næfre þe myntan’, a correction of Textus Roffensis’ ‘næfre ðæt yntan’, and which appears in the only other manuscript containing Hit becwæð: Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 383, folios 59r–59v, at folio 59v, line 2: www.earlyenglishlaws.ac.uk/laws/manuscripts/b/?tp=s&nb=2086 [accessed 14.02.18]. In his own translation of Hit becwæð, Patrick Wormald translates myntan with the modern legal term ‘devise’, meaning to leave land by means of a will: The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century (Blackwell, 2001), pp. 384–85.

5 Old English toft, probably a Scandinavian loan-word, meaning ‘a piece of ground’: see Bosworth and Toller Dictionary online: http://www.bosworthtoller.com/030678 [accessed 14.02.18].

6 ‘tithing-man’: translating ‘tinan’ (? accusative of tin [variant of tien]), ‘ten’, a ‘ten-man’, an allusion to the ‘tithingmen’, who had responsibilities assisting at the hundred court. See Tom Lambert, Law and Order in Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford University Press, 2017), p. 247.

7 ‘he was alive’, referring to the man who bequeathed the property.

8 ‘sake and soke’ (Old English, sac and socn) was a ‘standard way of referring to the right to receive legal revenues’ from owned land: Lambert, Law and Order, p. 134.

9 See above, n. 4.

10 ‘-c’ corrects a ‘-t’.