Whip

It is not certain what this leather-thronged whip was used for. Under Anglo-Saxon law only enslaved people could be punished by flogging. As they owned no property, an enslaved person could not pay a fine or compensation for breaking the law, and was flogged for a minor offence, mutilated or killed for a more serious crime. Many household servants and farm labourers were 'unfree'. Some were born into slavery; others were prisoners of war; others were penal slaves (enslaved for having committed a crime). It was illegal to sell enslaved people of English race overseas. The trade in enslaved people persisted even after the Norman Conquest.