For all the mutilation and execution in this volume, there has been little discussion of the people who issued and implemented judicial sentences in Anglo-Saxon England. While responsibility for the capture, imprisonment, and upkeep of offenders was occasionally assigned to specific individuals in pre-Conquest legislation, corporal penalties rarely designated an agent for the exercise of justice. Instead, the harshest punishments were often articulated with an impersonal construction: let the thieving hand be cut off (slea mon þa hond); let the adulteress lose her nose and ears (heo þolige nasa J earena); let the traitor’s life be forfeit (si he his feores scyldig). Although execution cemeteries confirm that both lethal and non-lethal penalties were in fact carried out, it is unclear who exactly oversaw these judicial tasks. The most visible face of justice was the king, who was invariably depicted as the promulgator and enforcer of law in Anglo-Saxon legislation. Even if he was only infrequently involved in the day-to-day work of judging and condemning criminals, the king was consistently portrayed as the source and keeper of the peace. In practice, however, most acts of justice would have been handled on a local level, with lesser magnates initiating legal proceedings on their own authority and imposing punishments within their jurisdictions. Yet even in these cases, the king remained the ultimate source of mercy for the condemned, retaining the right to commute or reduce sentences. Judges might choose from a range of punishments or arbitrate a settlement, but the king could always claim the final word.

So what of the individuals who were responsible for passing judgment in the first place? Whether they were royal reeves, bishops, or other local authority figures, their job cannot have been an easy one. Judges as a group were often chastised by Old English commentators, who complained regularly, if abstractly, about abuses of judicial power. While such general accusations cannot provide an accurate measure of corruption in Anglo-Saxon England, they certainly reflect a stereotype of individuals subverting justice in favor of personal gain. Authors from Alcuin to Ælfric denounced those who issued unjust judgments for their own benefit, affirming that judges who submitted to bribery would ‘endure vengeance on Judgment Day’ [in Dei judicio vindictam sustinebit] and suffer ‘eternal torments with the treacherous devil’ [mid þam swicolan deofle þa ecan susle].