In Anglo-Saxon Britain, violence and feuding were a real and socially destabilising route used to correct actual or perceived wrongs. These approaches were originally incorporated into the primitive legal system via the process of outlawing and ‘hue and cry’ communal vigilantism. Over time, localised justice was increasingly stripped of violence through the system of ‘bots’, private payments to compensate grievances, and ‘wites’, payments to the monarch. As wrongdoing was essentially still a private affair, a value payment was a simple, non-violent solution. As prisons were not a functional system for holding individuals securely at the time, fleeing to avoid justice was a systemic risk. To combat this risk alleged wrongdoers were allowed to pay ‘bail’, at the exact equivalent value of their bot, in exchange for going free until the date of trial. Some crimes, however, remained so serious that only custody was appropriate.