ontent with silver. He ordered that the arms should go to the
champions, but the captured ships should pass to the common people, as
the due of those who had the right of building and equipping vessels.
(b) Also he forbade that anyone should venture to lock up his household
goods, as he would receive double the value of any losses from the
treasury of the king; but if anyone thought fit to keep it in locked
coffers, he must pay the king a gold mark. He also laid down that anyone
who spared a thief should be punished as a thief. (d) Further, that the
first man to flee in battle should forfeit all common rights. (e) But
when he had returned into Denmark he wished to amend by good measures
any corruption caused by the evil practices of Grep; and therefore
granted women free choice in marriage, so that there might be no
compulsory wedlock. And so he provided by law that women should be held
duly married to those whom they had wedded without consulting their
fathers. (f) But if a free woman agreed to marry a slave, she must fall
to his rank, lose the blessing of freedom, and adopt the standing of a
slave. (g) He also imposed on men the statute that they must marry any
woman whom they had seduced. (h) He ordained that adulterers should be
deprived of a member by the lawful husbands, so that continence might
not be destroyed by shameful sins. (I) Also he ordained that if a Dane
plundered another Dane, he should repay double, and be held guilty of
a breach of the peace. (k) And if any man were to take to the house of
another anything which he had got by thieving, his host, if he shut the
door of his house behind the man, should incur forfeiture of all his
goods, and should be beaten in full assembly, being regarded as having
made himself guilty of the same crime. (l) Also, whatsoever exile should
turn enemy to his country, or bear a shield against his countrymen,
should be punished with the loss of life and goods. (m) But if any man,
from a contumacious spirit, were slack in fulfilling the orders of the
king, he should be punished with exile. For, on all occasion of any
sudden and urgent war, an arrow of wood, looking like iron, used to be
passed on everywhere from man to man as a messenger. (n) But if any one
of the commons went in front of the vanguard in battle, he was to rise
from a slave into a freeman, and from a peasant into a nobleman; but if
he were nobly-born already, he should be created a governor. So great
a guerdon