CHAPTER XIII.

_EARLY ANGLO-SAXON CUSTOM._

I. KING ALFRED’S DOOMS.

[Sidenote: Alfred’s laws not earlier than the Compact with Guthrum.]

In order that the examination of early Anglo-Saxon custom may be free from the intrusion of elements introduced by the Northmen, it is necessary to go back to evidence of earlier date than the laws of King Alfred. Though collected mainly from earlier sources, these laws took their present form probably after the Compact with Guthrum had been made.

They do not profess to be a full statement of early West-Saxon law. King Alfred himself declares that he dared not add much of his own, ‘But those things which I met with either of the days of Ine my kinsman, or of Offa, King of the Mercians, or of Ethelbert--those which seemed to me the rightest I have here gathered together and rejected the others.’

Under these circumstances it will be more convenient to refer back to King Alfred’s laws when needful in connection with the earlier evidence than to consider them as a separate whole.

There is, however, one subject upon which the evidence of King Alfred’s laws may properly be considered before passing on to the earlier laws.

[Sidenote: Were the terms ceorl and gafol-gelda equivalent?]

We have seen that in the Compact with Guthrum the Anglo-Saxon ‘ceorl who sits on gafol-land’ and who was made ‘equally dear’ at 200 scillings with the Danish lysing was, if the words may be taken strictly, not necessarily a typical or representative member of the ceorlisc class as a whole. Only some of the ceorlisc class may have been gafol-geldas on other people’s land. It is important, therefore, to examine whether King Alfred’s laws afford contemporary evidence that the ceorlisc and the twy-hynde classes were practically the same, and whether they were, as a rule, gafol-geldas. We have seen, from the precious fragments before quoted, that under ancient ‘English’ law a ceorl could rise out of the twy-hynde class and become entitled to a twelve-hynde wergeld of 2000 thrymsas.

If such a statement had been found in West-Saxon law, the inference might at first sight be that the ceorlisc class could hardly have been mainly a class of gafol-geldas. The laws of Alfred surely ought to throw some light upon this important matter.

In section 39 is the following:--

[Sidenote: The ceorl below the six-hyndeman.]

Gif hwa on ciorlisces monnes flette gefeohte mid syx scill. gebete þam ceorl. Gif he wæpne gebrede ⁊ no feohte sie bi healfum þam. Gif syx-hyndum þissa hwæðer gelimpe þriefealdlice [arise be þære ciorliscan bote. xii-hyndum men twyfealdlice] be þæs syx-hyndan bote.

If any one fight in a ceorlisc man’s flet with six scillings let him make bot to the ceorl. If he draw his weapon and fight not let it be half of that. If, however, either of these happen to a six-hynde man let it increase threefoldly according to the ceorlisc bot; to a twelve-hyndeman twofoldly according to the six-hynde’s bot.

The ceorlisc man in this section takes the place of the twyhynde man in contrast with the six-hynde and twelve-hynde classes. The payments are the bots payable to the owners for fighting within their sacred precinct or inclosure, and the amounts following the proportions of the wergelds of the three classes are:--

Ceorlisc man’s 6 scillings Six-hyndeman 18 ” Twelve-hyndeman 36 ”

In this section the ceorlisc class seems clearly to take the place of the twy-hynde class. They seem to be identical.

Section 40 gives similar evidence, in connection with the _burg_ -or _burh_-bryce or breach of the fence of the sacred precinct.

Cyninges burg-bryce bið cxx scill. Ærcebiscopes hund nigontig scill. Oðres biscepes & ealdormonnes lx scill. Twelf-hyndes monnes xxx scill. Syx-hyndes monnes xv scill. Ceorles edorbryce v scill.…

The King’s burh-bryce shall be cxx scillings. An archbishop’s ninety scillings. Any other bishop’s and an earldorman’s lx scillings. A twelve-hyndeman’s xxx scillings. A six-hyndeman’s xv scillings. A ceorl’s edorbreach v scillings.…

[Sidenote: The ceorl twy-hynde.]

Here again the ceorl takes the place of the twy-hyndeman, and the burh-bryce is graduated accordingly, the twelve-hyndeman’s being six times the ceorl’s.

King’s 120 scillings Archbishop’s 90 ” Ealdorman’s or bishop’s 60 ” Twelve-hynde’s 30 ” Six-hynde’s 15 ” Ceorl’s edorbreach 5 ”

There may well be some delicate significance in the word _burh_-bryce being applied only to the twelve-hynde or six-hynde men, and not to the ceorl, as though the word _burh_ could not be applied to the ceorl’s homestead. His ‘flet,’ surrounded by its _edor_ or hedge, was perhaps too humble to be classed with the moated or walled enclosure of the _burh_ of the higher landed classes without a change of epithet. But there is nothing to show that the ceorl of this clause is not identical with the ordinary twy-hyndeman.

Lastly, in sections 10 and 18 the three classes are again described as twelve-hynde, six-hynde, and ceorlisc; while in sections 29, 30, and 31 they are described as twelve-hynde, six-hynde, and twy-hynde.

All this seems to show that for general purposes ‘twy-hynde’ and ‘ceorlisc’ were convertible terms.

[Sidenote: Ceorls must be mostly gafol-geldas.]

It can hardly be said that there is anything in King Alfred’s laws making a distinction between the twy-hynde class and the ceorlisc class. There seems to be nothing to suggest that the twy-hynde wergeld was confined to any particular section of the ceorlisc class. And therefore, so far as the laws of Alfred are concerned, the description of the twy-hynde class in the Compact with Guthrum as gafol-geldas equally dear with the Danish lysing would seem to apply generally to the ceorlisc class as a whole. And this being so, it would seem probable that, speaking broadly, by King Alfred’s time the chief practical division of classes had already resolved itself into that between the landed classes on the one hand and their gafol-paying tenants on the other.

It is quite true that under King Alfred’s laws there is the six-hynde class between the twelve-hynde and the twy-hynde or ceorlisc class; but his laws tell us nothing about this six-hynde class except what may be inferred from the fact that its members certainly were not included in the ceorlisc class. It can hardly be likely that King Alfred could, in his compact with Guthrum, have confined the twy-hynde class to the ‘ceorl who sits on gafol-land,’ leaving out the six-hynde class altogether, if, in his laws, he meant by the six-hynde class the ceorls who did not sit on gafol-land. It might have been possible to suppose that he used the word ‘ceorl’ in his laws in a wider sense, as including both twelve-hynde and twy-hynde, had he not introduced the six-hynde class between them and restricted the meaning of the word ‘ceorlisc’ to the twy-hynde class. He used it apparently to distinguish the twy-hynde from the other classes which by inference were not ceorlisc.

What the six-hynde class was and what the ceorlisc class was under West-Saxon law two centuries earlier than King Alfred’s day must be left to be discovered from the evidence of the Dooms of Ine.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The mund-byrd or borh-bryce of various classes.]

In the meantime, the consideration of the position of the ceorlisc class having brought before us the penalties for breach of the precinct and for fighting within the precinct of the various classes, it may be well to consider also the evidence of King Alfred’s laws upon the mund-byrd or borh-bryce of what we may regard perhaps as the official classes, and in which apparently, at this date, even the twelve-hynde man had no part.

The mund-byrd or borh-bryce seems to be confined to those in official or judicial position.

Already in King Alfred’s laws we have lost the word ‘grith’ as we had already in Cnut’s laws lost the later phrase ‘sac and soc,’ but the tribal principle underlying the meaning of the words remains the same and becomes all the clearer as we go back in the evidence.

In s. 3, the borh-bryce and mund-byrd of the king are stated to be _five pounds of_ ‘mærra pæninga,’[241] an archbishop’s three pounds, and those of the ealdorman and lesser bishops two pounds, exactly as they were reported to have been in Cnut’s time in the ‘grith-law’ of the South Angles.[242]

[Sidenote: Its tribal origin.]

The almost indiscriminate use of the two terms in this clause suggests again the very slight distinction between them. The man who by giving his pledge placed himself artificially, so to speak, under the mund or protection of a person in a judicial position or authority and broke his pledge became guilty of borh-bryce or mund-byrd, it hardly mattered which. The penalty apparently included both crimes in one. If we might use the Brehon phrase it was the _eneclann_, or honour price of the person whose dignity was injured, which had to be paid.

But, as we have seen, these penalties were not only personal but also connected with the sanctity of what under Brehon law was called the ‘maigin’ or precinct. The Brehon tract which declares the extent of the ‘inviolable precinct’ of the ‘boaire-chief’ to reach as far as he can throw a spear or hammer from the door of his house, also states that those of higher chieftains extended by multiples of this according to their honour-price, so that the inviolable precinct of the _ri-tuath_ extended to sixty-four spear-casts from his door.[243] We have already quoted a fragment fixing the extent of the king’s ‘grith’ at ‘three miles and three furlongs and three acre breadths and nine feet and nine hand-breadths and nine barleycorns from the burhgeat where the king is.’[244]

[Sidenote: The ceorl or gafol-gelda had a flet the peace of which could be broken.]

Under King Alfred’s laws, as we have seen, the penalties for breaking into this precinct and committing crimes in it were payable to the person whose ‘peace’ was thus broken, and were not confined to the official classes as the mund-byrd and borh-bryce were. They went back to the tribal root-idea of the sanctity of the hearth and homestead of every tribesman. They extended from the king to the ceorl through all grades. The penalties for fighting within the precinct were practically the same in amount as those for the breaking into it. The penalty for fighting in the ceorlisc-man’s ‘flet’ was practically the same as that for breaking through his ‘edor’ into it.

When all these penalties are put side by side in the form of a table two points become evident.

First, how far removed the social position of the twelve-hyndeman was from that of the ealdorman. The penalty for fighting within his precinct is not much more than a third of that of the bishop and ealdorman, the inference being that his official position was much lower than the ealdorman’s.

Secondly, when we compare the figures in the three columns, while the burh-bryce and fightwite of the twelve-hynde, six-hynde, and twy-hynde classes are both graduated in proportion to their wergelds and very closely resemble one another, it is curious to notice that the fightwite is based upon a duodecimal and the burh-bryce on a decimal system of reckoning, as if they had been derived from different original sources. If King Alfred had originated them he would probably have made them alike.

In the following statement, collected from the several sections of King Alfred’s Laws for purposes of comparison and future reference, the amounts are stated in Wessex scillings of five pence.

+----------------------+-----------------+------------+-----------------+ | | Borh-bryce and | | | | | mund-byrd | Burh-bryce | Fightwite | +----------------------+-----------------+------------+-----------------+ | | (s. 3) | (s. 40) | | | | | | | |Of the king |(5 lbs) 240 _s._ | 120 _s._ |(s. 7) (in the | | | | |king’s doom) | | | | | | |Of the archbishop |(3 lbs) 144 _s._ | 90 _s._ |(s. 15) 150 _s._ | | | | | | |Of other bishops and | | | | | ealdorman |(2 lbs) 96 _s._ | 60 _s._ |(s. 15) 100 _s._ | | | | | | |Of do. in his ‘gemot’ | | |(s. 38) 120 _s._ | | | | | | |Of the twelve-hyndeman| | 30 _s._ |(s. 39) 36 _s._ | | | | | | |Of the six-hyndeman | | 15 _s._ |(s. 39) 18 _s._ | | | | | | |Of the ceorlisc man or| | | | | twy-hyndeman | | 5 _s._ |(s. 39) 6 _s._ | +----------------------+-----------------+------------+-----------------+

II. THE DIALOGUE OF EGBERT, ARCHBISHOP OF YORK A.D. 732-766. ECCLESIASTICAL OATHS AND WERGELDS.

There is a gulf of nearly two centuries in the West-Saxon evidence between the laws of Alfred and the ‘Dooms’ of Ine.[245]

We are taken at a leap, not only beyond all thought of the Northmen’s invasions, but also half a century behind another great epoch of European importance.

The Empire of Charlemagne formed a kind of watershed in Anglo-Saxon as in European history, and was marked, as we have seen, by a permanent change in the currency of the Western world.

[Sidenote: Position of Northumbria before the time of Charlemagne.]

The Courts of Offa and Egbert were intimately connected with the Imperial Court of Charlemagne, and the transition from the early Anglo-Saxon currency of sceatts to that of the heavier pence was a typical result of the influence of the Empire. It may be that the supremacy of Wessex under Egbert was indirectly another result of it.

The kingdom of Egbert did not extend over Northumbria, and Northumbria had its own independent connection with the Court of Charlemagne. It had its own mode of monetary reckoning in ‘thrymsas,’ and from the Northumbrian fragments already examined we have gained some glimpses into its ancient customs.

The document next to be examined refers to Northumbria, and, as it dates from the period immediately preceding the time of Charlemagne, it helps to bridge over the gulf between the Laws of Alfred and Ine.

[Sidenote: Egbert, Archbishop of York, A.D. 750.]

It is in the form of a Dialogue or set of questions put to Egbert, Archbishop of York, by his priests, with his answers thereto, and its date may be about A.D. 750.

Egbert, Archbishop of York, was an important figure in Anglo-Saxon history. The brother of Eadbert, the Northumbrian king, the recipient on his accession to his episcopal dignity of the remarkable letter of Bede describing the religious anarchy of his diocese, the founder of the great school at York, in which his pupil Alcuin was educated and from which he migrated to the Court of Charles the Great, Egbert was an important personage, and the centre of beneficent influence in the Northumbrian church and kingdom.

[Sidenote: His Roman and clerical point of view.]

Moreover, this document, so far as it goes and as regards the matters mentioned in it, deals with the questions raised by it avowedly from an ecclesiastical point of view. The great ecclesiastic comes down upon his diocese from a wider world. He had been educated and ordained deacon at Rome. And just as in the monastic rules of St. Benedict Roman weights and measures were adhered to, so when this archbishop has to speak of money matters, ignoring all local currencies, he still thinks and speaks and calculates in the terms of the Roman Imperial currency, and not in Anglo-Saxon sceatts and scillings, or in the thrymsas of Northumbrian usage.

The Dialogue contains several interesting clauses.

[Sidenote: What to be the value of the oaths of clerics.]

The first to be noticed is in answer to the question as to the value to be attached to the oaths of the bishop, priest, deacon, and monk. The reply is:--

Ordines supradicti, secundum gradus promotionis, habeant potestatem protestandi: presbiter secundum numerum cxx tributariorum; diaconus vero juxta numerum lx manentium; monachus vero secundum numerum xxx tributariorum, sed hoc in criminali causa. Cæterum si de terminis agrorum oritur altercatio, presbitero liceat juramenti sui adtestatione terram videlicet unius tributarii in jus transferre æcclesiæ. Duobus quoque diaconis id ipsum conceditur. Testificatio vero trium monachorum in id ipsum sufficiat.

The said orders according to their grade of promotion shall have power of protestation. The priest to the number of cxx tributarii; the deacon up to the number of lx ‘_manentes_;’ the monk to the number ‘xxx tributarii,’ _i.e._ in a criminal cause. But if the dispute has arisen about the boundaries of lands it shall be lawful to the priest on attestation of his oath to transfer, into the right of the church, land, _i.e._ of one _tributarius_. To two deacons also the same is conceded. Let attestation of three monks suffice for the same.

Now, it seems very unlikely that such a question as this about the value of oaths should be asked of the Archbishop if it had already been settled by law in Northumbria. And so we seem to see him here making a claim and laying down a principle for the first time in Northumbria the following of which resulted in his priests being put upon a par with the secular thane as regards the value of their oaths.

[Sidenote: In Mercia priest’s oath of same value as that of the thane.]

The principle that one man’s oath was worth more than another’s we have seen already stated in the undated fragment on ‘Mercian oaths,’ which very possibly represented ancient tradition.

A twelve-hynde oath stands for six ceorls’ oaths, because if a man should avenge a twelve-hyndeman he will be fully avenged on six ceorls and his wergeld will be six ceorls’ wergelds (p. 360).

And, further, the right of the priest to be put on equal footing with the thane we have seen recognised in another fragment.

A mass priest’s oath and a secular thane’s are in English law reckoned of equal value, and by reason of the seven church degrees that the mass priest through grace of God has acquired, he is worthy of thane-right (p. 361).

The same principle was recognised in the further fragment on the North People’s wergelds.

The usual statement in Continental and Anglo-Saxon laws as regards compurgation is that a man must clear himself by his oath and the oaths of so many oath-helpers. But in the Laws of Ine, with which the Archbishop was doubtless conversant, another method was followed in some cases. A man must clear himself, not with the oaths of so many oath-helpers, but with an oath of so many _hides_. The claim of the Archbishop seems to favour the view, suggested but hardly established by various passages in the Laws of Ine, that the twelve-hyndeman’s oath was reckoned at 120 hides.[246]

[Sidenote: Oaths of so many hides.]

All that one can say is that the Archbishop in claiming that the Northumbrian priest’s oath should be regarded as one of ‘120 tributarii’ seems to have had in his mind what was afterwards generally conceded, _i.e._ that the priest should be put, in social position, on a par with the thane or twelve-hynde man. Moreover, the Archbishop’s use in this connection of the phrase ‘so many _tributarii_’ or ‘_manentes_,’ instead of so many ‘hides,’ is interesting. It helps us to understand that the hide as used in the Laws of Ine was probably the same fiscal or gafol paying unit as the _familia_ of Bede.

Another clause in this interesting document bears more directly upon the question of homicide, and it is valuable as giving information quite independent of the Laws.

It is the answer of the Archbishop to the question, ‘What if a layman shall kill a cleric or a monk, whether the _precium sanguinis_ according to the law _natalium parentum_ shall be paid to his near relations or whether his _seniores_ are to be satisfied by a larger amount--which does your Unanimity sanction?’

The reply is as follows:--

[Sidenote: The wergelds of the clergy to be paid to the church.]

Quicunque vero ex laicis occiderit episcopum, presbiterum, vel diaconum, aut monachum, agat pœnitentiam secundum gradus pœnitentiæ constitutos, et reddat precium æcclesiæ suæ; pro episcopo secundum [placitum] universalis consilii, pro presbitero octingentos siclos, pro diacono sexingentos, pro monacho vero quadringentos argenteos; nisi aut dignitas natalium vel nobilitas generis majus reposcat precium. Non enim justum est, ut servitium sanctæ professionis in meliori gradu perdat quod exterior vita sub laico habitu habuisse jure parentum dinoscitur.

Whoever indeed of laymen shall have killed a bishop, priest, or deacon or monk shall do penance according to the constituted scale of penitentials, and let him pay the price to his church--for a bishop according to [the decision] of a general Council:

For a priest 800 sicli For a deacon 600 sicli But for a monk 400 argentei[247]

unless dignity of birth or nobility of kindred demand a greater _precium_. For it is not just that service in a holy profession in a higher grade should lose what secular life in lay dress may be recognised to have by right of parentage.

The wergelds here stated for the clergy are stated in _sicli_ and _argentei_. The Roman argenteus, as we have seen (after Nero’s time), was the drachma of silver, and the siclus was a didrachma or quarter of an ounce. The Archbishop, therefore, was claiming 200 ounces of silver as the wergeld of his Northumbrian priest.

[Sidenote: Stated in Roman silver currency.]

Whether he knew it or not, this amounted in value to 4000 sceatts (of 20 to the ounce), _i.e._ 800 Wessex and 1000 Mercian scillings. So that in claiming for his priest a wergeld of 200 ounces of silver he does not seem to have had in his mind either the Mercian or the Wessex twelve-hyndeman’s wergeld, of 1200 scillings, of 5 or 4 sceatts, but, possibly, as we shall see, a Kentish wergeld of 200 Kentish scillings of 20 sceatts.

[Sidenote: Priest’s wergeld to be 200 Roman ounces of silver.]

The Archbishop’s claim falling short of what was ultimately granted in Northumbria is curious as showing that Northumbrian law, at this time, before the inroads of the Norse invaders, was still unsettled, and that the Archbishop may have been influenced by Kentish rather than by West-Saxon or Mercian precedents. It was after another century, and after the Norse invasion and conquest, that the wergelds of the mass-thane and secular-thane in the ‘North People’s Law’ were stated to be alike at 2000 thrymsas, or 1200 Wessex shillings. How much earlier the equation was made in Northumbria we know not.

The next clause to be noticed is that in reply to question viii., viz. ‘If any monks shall mix themselves up with sacrilege, should _you_ now prosecute, if the avengement of the crime pertains to laymen who are their relations?’

The reply is as follows:--

[Apostolus dicit,] omnes causas æcclesiæ debere apud sacerdotes dijudicari. Si qui vero æcclesiastici crimen aliquod inter laicos perpetraverint, homicidium, vel fornicationem, vel furtum agentes, hos placuit a secularibus in quos peccaverunt omnimodo occupari; nisi animo fuerit æcclesiæ pro talibus satisfacere. Laici vero qui sacrilega se contagione miscuerint velatis, non eodem modo quo lex publica fornicarios puniri percensuit, set duplicato xxx siclorum pecunia, hoc est lx argenteos volumus dare ecclesiæ adulterantes, quia graves causæ graviores et acriores querunt curas.

The Apostle declares that all ecclesiastical causes should be settled by priests. But if any ecclesiastics have perpetrated any crime among laymen, homicide or fornication or theft, it has been decreed that they be followed up in every case by laymen against whom they have sinned, unless it be the intention of the Church to make satisfaction for them. But laymen who shall have joined in sacrilegious intercourse with nuns [shall be dealt with] not in the same manner as the public law decrees fornicators to be punished, but _double_--by the sum of xxx _sicli_--_i.e._ we wish adulterers to give to the Church lx _argentei_, because severe cases require severer and sharper cures.

This passage once again makes it clear that in this ecclesiastical document of the Archbishop of York 30 sicli = 60 argentei or Roman drachmæ.

[Sidenote: Ecclesiastical causes to be settled by priests.]

And, apart from this monetary question, the clause is interesting as marking the claim that all ecclesiastical causes should be settled by the clergy themselves.

In case of crime by an ecclesiastic against a layman the Church reserved the right to stop the layman’s prosecution by payment of the wergeld or other satisfaction. At the same time the Church was to claim double compensation from laymen committing crime against nuns. It is impossible to disassociate this document from the letter of Bede describing the religious anarchy of the diocese caused by the abuses of the loose monastic system in vogue, and urging the newly appointed prelate, who was not yet Archbishop, to undertake their energetic reformation.

[Sidenote: The Church succumbed to the wergeld system.]

But for the present purpose the real worth of these statements is the independent evidence they give of the continued strength of the wergeld system and the force of tribal custom in the Northumbrian kingdom before the Norse invasions. The sense of individualism in Christianity was opposed to the solidarity and joint responsibility of the kindred. But instead of fighting against the wergeld system the Church had actually succumbed to it, and adopted it for its own advantage, placing a money price upon the blood of its several ecclesiastical ranks, making the value of the priest four times that of the monk.

The system of compurgation, again, was a part of tribal usage. The Church adopted it and graduated the worth of the oaths of its various grades according to secular usage, making the oath of the priest in evidence four times the value of that of the monk.

In other words, in England, as on the Continent, the clergy, instead of combating tribal custom in these matters, took their place in the order of secular rank according to their several grades, bishops claiming the wergeld of princes, and priests that of thanes, with, however, the obviously useful reservation that if their secular rank by parentage and birth should be higher than their ecclesiastical grade, the higher wergeld should be theirs.

All this we see in the course of being introduced into Northumbrian usage in answer to local inquiry and local needs, upon the authority of perhaps the very wisest of Saxon prelates.

The wisdom of such accommodation as this on the part of the Church to pagan tribal usage is not the matter in question. The point of the evidence is the proof it gives of the continued strength of tribal usage in England after many generations of occupation and settlement.

III. THE DOOMS OF INE, A.D. 688-725.

The Dooms of King Ine occupy so important a position as the earliest direct information upon Anglo-Saxon custom apart from Kent that they demand careful separate study.

We ought to be able to learn something from them of the aim and spirit of legislation in Wessex two centuries before King Alfred added them to his laws.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Ine’s Dooms apart from Alfred’s.]

There is no reason, I think, to suspect that the text of the Dooms of Ine was altered by Alfred. The words already quoted in which he says that in his Dooms he collected together what he thought ‘rightest’ of those things which he met with of the days of Ine and Offa and Ethelbert without adding much of his own are quite consistent with his preservation of King Ine’s laws as a whole, though in some points differing from his own.[248]

King Ine came to the throne in A.D. 688, and he states in his preamble that he issued his ‘Dooms’ with the counsel of Cenred his father and of the Bishops of Winchester and London (who had already had twelve or thirteen years’ experience in their sees) and also with the counsel of all his _ealdormen_ and his Witan:--

ꝥ te ryht æw ⁊ ryhte cyne-domas þurh ure folc gefæstnode ⁊ getrymede wæron, ꝥ te nænig ealdormonna ne us under-geþeodedra æfter þam wære awendende þas ure domas.

So that just law and just kingly dooms might be settled and established throughout our folk; so that none of the _ealdormen_ nor of our subjects should hereafter pervert these our dooms.

[Sidenote: The ealdorman a shire-man in judicial position.]

We mark, then, at once that at this period the most prominent public official was the _ealdorman_. From clause 8 and clause 9 we learn that private revenge for a wrong was forbidden before justice had been demanded from a ‘“scir-man” or other judge.’ And that the ealdorman was a shire-man we learn from another clause (clause 36).

Seþe þeof gefehð oþþe him mon gefongenne agifð ⁊ he hine þonne alæte oþþe þa þiefðe gedierne forgielde þone þeof [be] his were.

(36) Let him who takes a thief or to whom one taken is given, and then lets him go, or conceals the theft, pay for the thief according to his wer.

Gif he ealdormon sie þolie his scire buton him kyning arian wille.

If he be an _ealdorman_ let him forfeit his ‘shire’ unless the King be merciful to him.

Here, as in Alfred’s Laws, the ealdorman is an official with judicial jurisdiction. And we learn more about his social status as compared with that of other classes from s. 45.

[Sidenote: Burg-bryce of various classes.]

Burg-bryce mon sceal betan c. xx scill. kyniges ⁊ biscepes þær his rice bið. Ealdormonnes lxxx scill. Kyniges þegnes lx scill. Gesiðcundes monnes land-hæbbendes xxxv scill. ⁊ be þon ansacan.

(45) Bot shall be made for the _King’s_ burg-bryce, and a bishop’s where his jurisdiction is, with cxx shillings; for an _ealdorman’s_ with lxxx shillings; for a _King’s thane’s_ with lx shillings; for that of a _gesithcund_-man having land with xxxv shillings: and _according to this let them make legal denial_.

The _burg_-bryce is the same thing as the _burh_-bryce--the breaking into the _burh_. And if we compare the ‘bots’ of this clause with the _burh_-bryce of King Alfred’s s. 40 (_supra_, p. 372) we see that he was not merely copying King Ine’s clause. Nearly as they may resemble one another, there are marked differences between the two clauses.

The king’s burh-bryce in King Ine’s Laws is the same as King Alfred’s. The ealdorman’s is eighty scillings instead of sixty. The king’s thane takes the ealdorman’s place with sixty, and the gesithcund-man’s burh-bryce in King Ine’s Laws is practically the same as the twelve-hyndeman’s in King Alfred’s laws.

[Sidenote: The gesithcund-man’s judicial position.]

The gesithcund-man we have met before in one of the fragments of early English law, but so far as relates to Wessex he appears in the Dooms of Ine for the first and last time, and we shall have to consider by-and-by how far he is the same person as the twelve-hyndeman. But for the present it is sufficient to note that he is mentioned along with the king’s thane and the ealdorman apparently in order to state the extent to which his oath was to be taken as valid in judicial evidence, or whatever is meant by the words ‘and according to this make legal denial.’

[Sidenote: Laws as to theft.]

The chief obstacle to the maintenance of the peace seems to have been the frequency of thefts and homicide of all kinds. The connection between homicide and theft is the subject of several clauses in the Laws of Ine. And as they bring into notice the liability of the kindred it may be well to consider them in order.

These are some of the clauses in the Laws of King Ine with reference to the slaying of a thief:--

Gif þeof sie gefongen swelte he deaðe oþþe his lif be his were man aliese.

(12) If a thief be seized let him perish by death or let his life be redeemed according to his wer.

Cierlisc mon gif he oft betygen wære gif he æt siþestan sie gefongen slea mon hond [of] oþþe fot.

(18) A ceorlisc man, if he have often been accused, if he at last be seized, let his hand or foot be cut off.

Gif feorcund mon oþþe fremde butan wege geond wudu gonge & ne hrieme ne horn blawe, for þeof he bið to profianne oþþe to sleanne oþþe to aliesanne.

(20) If a far-coming man or a stranger journey through a wood out of the highway and neither shout nor blow his horn he is to be held for a thief either to be slain or redeemed.

[Sidenote: The ge-geldas and kindred of the thief.]

Then comes the question what happens if a man should seize a thief and slay him as a thief. The next clause goes on to state that in the case of the thief slain in the wood the slayer must declare that he slew the man for a thief, and then neither the lord nor the _ge-gildas_ of the slain could demand a wergeld. But if he should conceal the slaying and it became known after a time, the way was open for the kindred of the supposed thief to exculpate him by oath and so claim his wergeld, from the slayer.

Where there is no concealment, the kindred of the thief must swear that there shall be no vengeance on him for delivering up the thief.

Se [þe] þeof gefehð [he] ah x. scill. ⁊ se cyning þone þeof ⁊ þa mægas him swerian aðas unfæhða.

(28) He who seizes a thief shall have ten scillings and the king the thief; and let the kindred [of the thief] swear to him oaths of ‘unfæhthe.’

If the man who had seized the thief let him go he was liable to pay ‘wite’--and if, as we have seen, an ‘ealdorman’ did so it was at the risk of losing his ‘shire.’

Theft seems to have been an increasing crime, for further on in Ine’s Laws there are repetitions of some of these clauses, with slight additions, showing that the Dooms of Ine were added to from time to time (s. 35 and s. 27).

[Sidenote: The ceorlisc and the gesithcund classes.]

We have seen how severe a penalty was attached to the crime against the king’s peace of letting a thief once seized escape. The following clause is still more severe upon any one harbouring a fugitive thief or other outlaw, and it introduces again the division of classes as regards wergelds into gesithcund and ceorlisc, but without mentioning the wergelds of each class.

Gif mon cierliscne monnan flieman-feorme teo be his agnum were geladige he hine. Gif he ne mæge gielde hine [be] his agenum were ⁊ se gesiðmon [eac] swa be his were.

(30) If a man accuse a ceorlisc-man of harbouring a fugitive [thief?] let him clear himself according to his own wer. If he cannot, let him pay for him according to his own wer, and the gesith-man in like manner according to his wer.

This ‘clearing himself according to his own wer’ alludes evidently to the oath of himself and his oath-helpers and shows that the oath required to clear the gesithcund-man from the charge was a greater one than that required to clear a ceorlisc-man. This was doubtless the case throughout, but apparently it had become needful to strengthen the oath of both classes. The following clause required that in the oath of both the gesithcund and ceorlisc-man in denial of homicide there should be among the oath-helpers ‘a King’s oath of 30 hides.’

[Sidenote: The oaths to be in their hyndens of co-swearers.]

Seþe bið wer-fæhðe betogen ⁊ he onsacan wille þæs sleges mid aðe þonne sceal bion on þære hyndenne an kyning [æðe] be xxx hida swa be gesiðcundum men swa be cierliscum swa hwæðer swa hit sie. Gif hine mon gilt þonne mot he gesellan on þara hyndenna gehwelcere monnan [and, _but not in H_] byrnan ⁊ sweord on ꝥ wer-gild gif he þyrfe.

(54) He who is charged with _wer-fæhthe_ and he is willing to deny the slaying on oath; then shall there be in the ‘hynden’ one king’s oath of 30 hides as well for a gesithcund-man as for a ceorlisc-man whichever it may be. If he has to pay him, then may he give the man of any one of those ‘hyndens’ a coat of mail and a sword in the wergeld if he need.

The last part of the clause is ambiguous, but on the whole, taking into account the Latin of the ‘Quadripartitus’ and Liebermann’s suggested translation and the difficulty of the various other suggested readings, I think it is most probable that the meaning may be, that if the man charged cannot get the required ‘king’s oath’ or that of another hynden without paying for it, he may give ‘a coat of mail and a sword’ to the ‘hynden’ if it should be needful. We may have to recur to this section, but without attempting to build anything upon this more than doubtful addition to it. Nothing important, I think, turns upon it.

[Sidenote: Both classes must follow to the fyrd.]

The following is important as showing that both the gesithcund and ceorlisc classes were under the military obligation to follow to the fyrd.

Gif gesiðcund mon landagende forsitte fyrde geselle cxx scill. ⁊ þolie his landes, unlandagende lx scill. cierlisc xxx scill. to fierdwite.

(51) If a gesithcund-man owning land neglect the fyrd, let him pay 120_s._ and forfeit his land, one not owning land 60_s._; a ceorlisc-man 30_s._ as fyrd-wite.

The recurrence in so many clauses of Ine’s Laws of the division of classes into gesithcund and ceorlisc leads to the conclusion that it must have been a very prominent one.

It was accepted in the Laws of Ine as a fact existing and of common knowledge, with no mark upon it of novelty or innovation. The distinction was evidently ancient and radical, and yet the word ‘gesithcund’ is not met with in any later laws.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Mention of twelve-, six-, and twy-hynde classes.]

Throughout the 76 clauses of the Laws of Ine only one makes direct mention of the division of classes into twelve-hynde and twy-hynde, the distinction so generally made in the later laws, and in this clause, as in King Alfred’s Laws, the six-hynde class also appears:--

Aet twy-hyndum were mon sceal sellan to mon-bot xxx scill. æt vi-hyndum lxxx scill. æt twelf-hyndum c.xx.

(70) With a twy-hyndeman’s wer shall be given as man-bot xxx scillings with a six-hynde’s lxxx scillings, [? lx s.], with a twelve-hynde’s cxx scillings.[249]

The man-bot was, as we have seen, the payment to a lord for the loss of his man.

There is an indirect mention of wergelds in s. 34, which states that any one who has been in a foray in which a man has been slain must prove himself innocent of the slaying and make bot for the foray according to the wergeld of the slain. If his wergeld be 200_s._ he must make bot with 50_s._, and the like justice was to be done with respect to the ‘dearer born.’

We may assume from this and the later evidence that already the wergeld of the twelve-hyndeman was 1200 scillings, and that of the twy-hyndeman 200 scillings, though in the Dooms of Ine this is not otherwise directly stated. The laws take it for granted that the amount of the wergelds was common knowledge, as in so many other cases.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The six-hynde class.]

The mention of the six-hynde class in addition to the twelve-hynde and twy-hynde classes makes it a matter of importance to learn what manner of persons were included in the six-hynde class.

The Laws of King Alfred, as we have seen, generally mention the six-hyndeman with the other classes, but without giving any clue to an answer to the question to what social rank he belonged. In the Laws of Ine, however, a distinct clue is given, and it is one which accords with Continental usage and suggests a reason for the disappearance of the six-hyndeman from the later laws. He is mentioned again after King Alfred’s time only in the so-called Laws of Henry I.

The clauses relating to this subject are important enough to claim consideration in a separate section.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The gafol-gelda and the gebur.]

One other important social distinction, or division of classes, appears already in the Laws of Ine, viz. that which existed between possessors of land and _gafol-geldas_ and _geburs_ who were, as we should say, _tenants_ on the land of others. We shall have to return to the consideration of this distinction and to note the fact that it is in these Laws of Ine that the _gebur_ appears as almost the equivalent of the _gafol-gelda_, while they afford incidental evidence also that the typical holding of the gafol-gelda (and thus of the gebur) was the ‘yardland’ or virgate of open-field husbandry.

The mention of the gafol-gelda and the gebur occurs in s. 6.

Gif hwa gefeohte on cyninges huse sie he scyldig ealles his ierfes ⁊ sie on cyninges dome hwæðer he lif age þe nage. Gif hwa on mynstre gefeohte hund twelftig scill. gebete. Gif hwa on ealdormonnes huse gefeohte oþþe on oðrer geþungenes witan lx scill. gebete he ⁊ oðer lx geselle to wite.

(6) If any one fight in the _king’s house_, let him be liable in all his property and be it in the king’s dooms whether he shall or shall not have life. If any one fight in a _minster_, let him make bot with cxx scillings. If any one fight in an _ealdorman’s_ house or in any other distinguished wita’s, let him make bot with lx scillings and pay a second lx scillings as wite.

Gif he þonne on gafol-geldan huse oþþe on gebures gefeohte c.xx scill. to wite geselle ⁊ þæm gebure vi scill.

But if he fight in a _gafol-gelda’s_ house or in a _gebur’s_, let him pay cxx scillings as wite, and to the gebur vi scillings.

And þeah hit sie on middum felda gefohten hund twelftig scill. to wite sie agifen.

And though it be fought on midfield let cxx scillings be given as wite.

[Sidenote: The gafol-gelda and gebur have only a six scilling fightwite.]

This clause is intelligible if we follow the principle that fighting anywhere is a breach of the king’s peace. The king, therefore, in every case and wherever it happens is entitled to a wite of 120 scillings. But if it happens within the house or precinct of an ealdorman or of any other chief member of the Witan the amount is divided between the king and his official. If the fighting is in the precinct or house of a gafol-gelda or gebur the king still gets his full wite of 120 scillings, and an additional six scillings is to be given to the gebur, just as in King Alfred’s Laws the same amount is to be given to the ceorlisc man for fighting in his ‘flet.’

This clause forms a valuable groundwork of evidence as to the position of the gafol-gelda under West Saxon law, and we shall have to recur to it when we further consider the position of the ceorlisc class at the date of King Ine’s Dooms. The omission of the gesithcund class from this section, unless included as distinguished members of the Witan, can hardly be accidental, but it is not easy at first sight to divine a plausible reason for it.

* * * * *

Let us for a moment try to recognise the position to which so far the Dooms of Ine have brought us.

We seem able in those already quoted to trace a process at work combining distinctions of classes of different origins and based upon different lines of thought.

We find a very marked and prominent division of classes into gesithcund and ceorlisc alongside of hardly more than incidental mention of the division of classes so prominent afterwards into twelve-hynde and twy-hynde. In King Alfred’s Laws we could trace no practical distinction between the twy-hynde and ceorlisc classes. We could not distinguish between them. All distinction at any rate evaded our notice. We have now to ask the double question what was the distinction between gesithcund and twelve-hynde, as well as what was the distinction between ceorlisc and twy-hynde.

The chief question raised by King Alfred’s Laws was whether any great distinction existed between the ‘ceorl who sits on gafol land’ and other members of the ceorlisc class. The Laws of King Alfred gave us no clue on this point. It seemed as though, after all, the ceorlisc class must have been so generally gafol-geldas that practically the twy-hynde and ceorlisc class might be spoken of roughly and inclusively as ‘ceorls who sit on gafol land,’ and that this ‘sitting on gafol land’ might be, after all, the fairly distinctive mark of the ceorlisc class for whom King Alfred claimed a twy-hynde wergeld as ‘equally dear’ with the Danish lysing.

[Sidenote: The gafol-gelda and gebur of Ine’s laws put in the place of the ceorlisc man of King Alfred.]

And now in this clause 6 of King Ine’s Laws we find the gafol-gelda or gebur put directly into the place of the ceorlisc man of King Alfred’s Laws with the same penalty of six scillings payable to him for fighting in his house or his ‘flet.’

_King Alfred’s Laws_, s. 39.

If any one fight in a ceorlisc man’s flet, with six scillings let him make bot to the ceorl.

_King Ine’s Laws_, s. 6.

But if he fight in a gafol-gelda’s house or in a gebur’s, let him pay … to the gebur six scillings.

It might be said at first sight that here surely is a clear trace of the degradation of the ceorl into a gafol-gelda during the 200 years between the Laws of King Ine and King Alfred. For, it might be said, the ceorl of King Alfred’s Laws has the same bot for the fighting in his house as that which the gafol-gelda had under Ine’s Laws 200 years earlier. This may be so. But how do we know that the gafol-gelda of King Ine’s time was not already the typical ceorl as he seems to have been in King Alfred’s time? In that case there would be no sign of degradation of the ceorl into the gafol-gelda. Or at any rate if there had been a degradation from some original higher position and status it had already taken place before the time of King Ine. Our judgment on the position of the ceorlisc class under King Ine’s Laws must still be reserved.

IV. THE POSITION OF STRANGERS IN BLOOD UNDER KING INE’S LAWS.--THE SIX-HYNDEMAN.

[Sidenote: Strangers in blood.]

The question of the position under West Saxon law of strangers in blood is one of much interest, and we have reserved the clauses relating to it for separate consideration.

There may have been several different classes of strangers.

[Sidenote: How were the earlier conquered inhabitants treated?]

How far there was a considerable substratum of conquered Romano-British inhabitants is a very vexed question. That there were such in the outlying and recently conquered districts is certain. Mr. Coote’s view may not be wholly mistaken that a Romano-British population, living, as on the Continent, under their own laws and customs, existed in most districts, especially in the towns.

These strangers may some of them have had land and some of them not. Certainly not all of them were regarded as theows or thralls.

To what class, then, did they belong? And how were they treated? What degree of freedom was granted them, and what was their wergeld, if they had any?

It is to the Laws of Ine that we must go for the answers to these questions. And we start on the inquiry seeking light also upon the position of the as yet unexplained six-hynde class so often mentioned in the Laws of King Alfred but never in the later laws.

The only hint we have had as yet as to the meaning of the six-hynde class is whether gesithcund-men not having land may not have belonged to it.

[Sidenote: The _wealh_ or _Wilisc-man_ with five hides was six-hynde.]

The wergelds of the ordinary classes of tribesmen were doubtless too well known to require more than incidental mention in King Ine’s Dooms, but there are several clauses or fragments of clauses specially mentioning the wergelds of the _wealh_ and of the _Wilisc_-man.

Wealh gif he hafað fif hyda he bið syx hynde.

(24) A _wealh_ if he have five hides ‘he shall be six-hynde.’

Gif Wylisc mon hæbbe hide londes his wer bið c.xx scill. gif he þonne hæbbe healfe lxxx scill. gif he nænig hæbbe lx scillinga.

(32) If a Wylisc-man have a hide of land his wer shall be cxx scillings, but if he have half a hide lxxx scillings, if he have none lx scillings.

Cyninges hors-wealh seþe him mæge geærendian þæs wer-gield bið cc scill.

(33) The king’s ‘horse-wealh’ who can do his errands, his wergeld shall be cc scillings.

It will be noticed that the wergeld of the _Wilisc_ man with one hide of land is one fifth of the wergeld of the _wealh_ with five hides, so that wealhs and Wilisc men seem to be treated on the same lines--as if the two words meant the same thing.

[Sidenote: The Gallo-Roman ‘_wala_.’]

It is not easy to draw a distinction between the ‘wealh’ and the ‘Wilisc’ man. ‘Wilisc’ is certainly used as the adjective corresponding to ‘wealh,’ though sometimes (as _e.g._ in ‘Wilisc ale’) for something specially Welsh. In the Lex Salica, as we have seen, the Gallo-Roman living under Roman law, according to the Malberg gloss was a ‘_Wala_’ with a wergeld half that of the ‘ingenuus’ living under Salic law. And, without pushing this meaning so far as Mr. Coote was inclined to do, we may fairly, I think, look upon the word ‘wealh’ as generally embracing not only natives of Wales and West Wales, but also the wider class of persons of the conquered populations, whether Welsh or Britons or Romano-Britons, who were not recognised as of Anglo-Saxon blood.

[Sidenote: The _Wallerwente_ of Yorkshire.]

We may call in the later evidence of the Northumbrian Priest-law[250] in illustration. The use of ores and half-marks in this document and its being, so to speak, domiciled in York, seem to connect it with the period of the Northmen’s conquest of Northumbria, when York was its capital and as yet the tide of battle had not been turned--_i.e._ shortly before the date of the Compact between Alfred and Guthrum. In this Priest-law the penalty for the practice of heathen rites on the part of a king’s thane was ten half-marks, and if he wished to deny the charge it must be with ten named by himself, ten named by his kindred (_maga_), and ten _Wallerwente_, and if he failed in the denial he had to pay the ten half-marks, half of which went to the church and half to the king.

And so also in the case of the ‘landagende man’ who had to pay six half-marks: he too must deny with as many of his like (_gelicena_) and as many _wente_ as the king’s thane. And so also in the case of a ‘cyrlisc’ man.

It is quite clear that these _Wallerwente_ were _free_ inhabitants of the district, for their oaths were taken in evidence, which would not have been done had they been theows. The Wallerwente were, on the other hand, not recognised as ‘ceorlisc’ Saxons. They were obviously the native Celtic inhabitants of the great plain of York[251]--the _gwent_ or basin of the Derwent and the Ouse. The locality is fixed by the clause which restricts the Sabbath day’s journey on necessity to six miles out of York.

[Sidenote: Under Frankish law the Gallo-Romans had half-wergelds.]

Now, we have seen that under Frankish laws the Gallo-Roman population living under Roman law had _half_-wergelds. If the freeman living under Salic law had a wergeld of 200 solidi the ‘Romanus possessor’ had a wergeld of 100 solidi. And so in the same way, returning to the Laws of Ine, while the gesithcund or other landed Wessex freeman was a twelve-hyndeman, the wealh who had five hides was reckoned as six-hynde.

[Sidenote: The wealh with five hides had a half-wergeld.]

We have seen that the English ceorl who rose to the possession of five hides and paid gafol to the king, and with coat of mail and over-gilded sword followed to the fyrd, became gesithcund with a wergeld of 1200 scillings. It is quite in accordance with tribal feeling as shown in Continental usage that the stranger in blood, whether Welsh or Romano-British, who had risen in the same way to the possession or occupation of five hides should be six-hynde with a half-wergeld of 600 scillings.

We have quoted the Northumbrian Priest-law and noted that its penalties in half-marks and ores suggest that it belongs to the period before King Alfred’s Compact with Guthrum, during which York was the capital of the Northmen’s kingdom. It is interesting to see that in the fragment of North People’s Law quoted in the previous chapter, belonging probably to the same district and to the same period, some of the clauses with reference to the Wilisc man are evidently copied from the Laws of Ine though with some additional matter and perhaps some slight errors in the figures.

And if a Wilisc-man thrive so that he have a hide of land and can bring forth the King’s gafol, then is his wergeld 120 scillings. And if he thrive not except to half a hide, then let his wer be 80 scillings. And if he have not any land, let him be paid for with 70 scillings [? 60].

[Sidenote: The conquering Northmen gave the hauld a wergeld twice that of the thane.]

And it is worth notice that it was in this very document that the Northmen as conquerors, while leaving the English wergeld of the thane at 2000 thrymsas or 1200 scillings, gave to their own ‘hold’ a double wergeld of 4000 thrymsas.

[Sidenote: The six-hynde class died out.]

We may therefore regard the six-hyndeman of King Ine and King Alfred’s Laws as probably the Wilisc man with five hides or more. There does not appear to be anything in King Alfred’s Laws to lead us away from this conclusion. Any other would leave the complete silence of King Alfred’s laws with regard to the Wilisc class unexplained, unless it could be considered that in the turmoil of the Northmen’s invasions and the stress of war the Wilisc class had already become more or less amalgamated with the Saxon population by the force of their common interests against the invaders.

The silence of the later laws as to a six-hynde class may probably be explained by the same considerations.

[Sidenote: The Wilisc man under Ine’s law only half as worthy as the Englishman.]

Passing from the Wilisc man who was six-hynde in consequence of his landed position to the Wilisc man viewed simply as a stranger in blood, there is further evidence that as a stranger he was regarded as only half as ‘worthy’ as an Englishman. In s. 46 of Ine’s Laws it is stated that an oath-worthy person charged with theft is to deny the charge with an oath of 120 hides if the accuser be an Englishman, but with only 60 hides if the accuser be a Wilisc man.

Ðonne mon monnan betyhð ꝥ he ceap forstele oþþe forstolenne gefeormie þonne sceal he be lx hyda onsacan þære þiefðe gif he að-wyrðe bið.

(46) When a man charges another that he steals, or harbours stolen cattle, then shall he deny the theft with lx hides if he be oath-worthy.

Gif þonne Englisc onstal ga forð onsace þonne be twy-fealdum.

If, however, an English charge of theft[252] come forward, let him then deny it with twice as many.

Gif hit þonne bið Wilisc onstal ne bið se að na þe mara.

But if it be a Wilisc charge, the oath shall not be the increased oath.

This clause does not tell us whether the Wilisc man was considered to be oath-worthy or not. Probably he would not be as against a Saxon. It only states that when the charge of theft was made by an Englishman the oath was to be one of twice as many hides as would be required to deny the charge of a Wilisc man.

[Sidenote: In the ‘Ordinance of the Dun-setas’ strangers have only half-wergelds and must go to the ordeal as not oath-worthy.]

Corroborative evidence as regards the half-wergelds and oath-worthiness of the wealh class may be found in an ordinance of later date, but belonging to Wessex, and it may be quoted as throwing strong light upon the position of the Wilisc or wealh class (_wealþeode_) in apparently a border district, where Saxons and wealhs met together with a boundary of a river between them. It is entitled an ‘Ordinance respecting the Dun-setas.’[253]

The leading fact throughout this document is that the two peoples met avowedly as strangers. Its aim was to keep the peace and to protect the owners of cattle on each side of the stream from the raids of their neighbours on the other.

They are recognised as strangers to each other and on principle treated reciprocally as such. Denial of a charge by oath and oath-helpers, unless by special agreement, is assumed to be of no use and evidently out of place between strangers in blood. Consequently the ordeal was the only answer to a charge of theft.

Ne stent nan oðer lád æt tihtlan bute ordal betweox Wealan & Englan, bute man þafian wille.

There stands no other purgation in an accusation save the ordeal between Wealas and English unless it be allowed.

This was fully in accordance with tribal custom no less than the further fact that their wergelds were, obviously for the same reason, to be half-wergelds.

Gyf Wealh Engliscne man ofsleane þearf he hine hiden-ofer buton be healfan were gyldan ne Ænglisc Wyliscne geon-ofer þe ma sy he þegen-boren sy he ceorl-boren healf wer þær æt-fealð.

If a Wealh slay an Englishman he need not pay for him on this side except with half his wer, no more than the Englishman for a Wylisc on that side, be he thane-born, be he ceorl-born, one half of the wer in that case falls away.

[Sidenote: These wylisc men were in Wessex.]

In this document the wealh is treated according to tribal principle as a stranger in blood, both as regards recourse to the ordeal, and the half-wergeld. And the word ‘wyliscne’ is used as the appropriate adjective distinguishing the wealh from the Englishman. So that in this case ‘wealh’ and ‘wylisc’ mean the same thing. Further, this evidence, though later in date probably than King Alfred’s Laws, is practically Wessex evidence, because, though the geographical position of the Dun-setas is not accurately known, their connection with the West Saxons is the one thing which is clear.[254]

Returning to the Laws of Ine, as the wergeld of the Wilisc man with five hides was a half-wergeld of 600 scillings it might be supposed that the ordinary Wilisc man’s would be a half-wergeld of 100 scillings. But it was not exactly so, for, according to s. 32 above quoted, the Wilisc man with one hide had a wergeld of 120 scillings, one with half a hide 80 scillings, one without any land 60 scillings.

In an isolated clause added to s. 23 a somewhat different statement is made. The wealh gafol-gelda has the same wergeld as if he had a hide of land, and the wealh theow the same wergeld as the Wilisc man without land.

[Sidenote: Various classes of wealhs and Wilisc men.]

Wealh gafol-gelda cxx scill. his sunu c. Ðeowne lx. somhwelcne fiftegum. Weales hyd[255] twelfum.

(23) A wealh gafol-gelda cxx scillings, his son c: a theow lx: some fifty: a wealh’s skin twelve.

That the theow of this passage is the ‘_wealh-theow_’ with a wergeld of 60 scillings is clear from sections 54 and 74, the first of which relates to the ‘_Wilisc wite theow_.’

Wite-þeowne monnan Wyliscne mon sceal bedrifan be twelf hidum swa þeowne to swingum. Engliscne be feower & þrittig hida.

(54) A Wilisc wite-theowman shall be followed up with twelve hides like a theow to the scourging; an English with four and thirty hides.

The wite-theow was a person who had once been free but from debt or calamity had sunk into thraldom.

The English ‘wite-theow’ is dealt with thus in the Laws of Ine.

Gif wite-þeow Englisc-mon hine forstalie ho hine mon & ne gylde his hlaforde. Gif hine mon ofslea ne gylde hine mon his mægum gif hie hine on twelf-monðum ne aliesden.

(24) If a wite theow, an Englishman, steal himself away, let him be hanged and nothing paid to his lord. If any one slay him let nothing be paid to his kindred if they have not redeemed him within twelve months.

His free kindred might ignore him if they liked: there was no need for them to pay the wergeld of a kinsman who had forfeited his freedom.

Section 74 relates to the _theow-wealh_, but this term would seem to apply to the case of the _wealh-wite-theow_.[256]

[Sidenote: The theow-wealh.]

Gif þeow-wealh Engliscne monnan ofslihð þonne sceal seþe hine ah weorpan hine to honda hlaforde ⁊ mægum oþþe lx scill. gesellan wið his feore. Gif he þonne þone ceap nelle fore gesellan þonne mot hine se hlaford gefreogan gielden siþþan his mægas þone wer gif he mæg-burg hæbbe freo. Gif he næbbe hedan his þa gefan. Ne þearf se frigea mid þam þeowan mæg-gieldan buton he him wille fæhðe of-aceapian ne se þeowa mid þy frigean.

(74) If a _theow-wealh_ slay an Englishman, then he who owns him shall deliver him up to the lord and the kindred or give 60 scillings for his life. But if he will not give that sum for him, then must the lord enfranchise him. Afterwards let his kindred pay the wer if he have a free _mæg-burh_. If he have not let his foes take heed to him. The free need not pay ‘mæg-bot’ with the theow unless he be desirous to buy off from himself the feud: nor the ‘theow’ with the free.

This clause is repeated in the so-called Laws of Henry I. c. lxx., but the amount named is 40 scillings instead of 60 scillings. Sixty scillings is double the manbot of the twy-hynde man in s. 70 of Ine’s Laws, and it may be the double value of the wealh-theow to his lord.

V. THE TWELVE-HYNDE AND TWY-HYNDE MEN AND THEIR HYNDENS OF OATH-HELPERS.

[Sidenote: The meaning of twelve-hynde and twy-hynde.]

The silence of the Dooms of Ine upon some of the most important matters relating to ancient custom is no doubt disappointing, but their position as almost our only direct evidence of the customs of Wessex for the first two or three centuries after the conquest of Britain gives to every hint a value. Some of the clauses are so isolated that if we could not approach them with light from other sources we should lose the right clue to their meaning. It is only by following the course we have adopted of working backwards from the known to the unknown that we can rightly interpret some of the clauses by reading into them some things not directly mentioned by them.

And yet if we try to understand such a fundamental matter as the meaning of the division of classes into _twelve-hynde_ and _twy-hynde_[257] it is to the Dooms of Ine that we must go.

[Sidenote: Connected with the system of oath-helpers.]

It is in these Dooms that the meaning of the words twelve-hynde and twy-hynde is most clearly connected with the system of compurgation and the oaths of the oath-helpers. It is moreover in these Dooms that at first sight the mystery is made still more mysterious by the statement of the value of the oaths in so many hides.

[Sidenote: Value of oaths in hides.]

The fact of this connection between the value of the oaths and hides was first brought to our notice in the Dialogue of Archbishop Egbert apparently as a matter already well known and established. And it was his claim that the oaths of his priests should be reckoned as oaths of 120 hides which confirmed what, from the Laws of Ine, was hardly more than doubtful inference that this was the value of the oath of the gesithcund or twelve-hynde class.

The Archbishop’s mention of it confirmed it, but left its meaning and origin as obscure as ever. And yet the whole question of the structure of Saxon society is so mixed up with the right understanding of the twelve-hynde and twy-hynde division of classes that unless further light can be let into it a good deal of what we should like to see clearly must remain unhappily enveloped in fog.

[Sidenote: Hides were family holdings. The _familia_ of Bede.]

Archbishop Egbert’s substitution of the phrase so many _tributarii_ or _manentes_ for the ‘so many hides’ of the Laws of Ine obliges us to regard the _hide_ of Ine’s Dooms in this connection as equivalent to the ‘familia’ of Bede. The Saxon translator of the Latin text of Bede translated the word _familia_ sometimes by ‘hide’ and sometimes by _hiwisc_ or family. In this connection it is also worth noting that, although writing a century later than Egbert and two centuries after the date of Ine’s Laws, the translator of Bede had not cast off all traces of tribal tradition, for he consistently used the word _mægthe_ as the equivalent of Bede’s ‘provincia.’ He still thought of tribes and peoples rather than of districts and provinces. His ideas in these things ran on tribal rather than on territorial lines. So to him the hide was still the _family_ unit, and the greater kindred or tribe, as in Beowulf, was the _mægthe_. In Beowulf we saw that some of them conquered others and made them pay tribute. So they did in Bede’s time.

[Sidenote: _Manentes_ and _tributarii_ of Egbert.]

While, then, we are obliged to connect the value of oaths reckoned as of so many hides with hides which were family holdings, or, as Egbert calls them, _manentes_ and _tributarii_, the original meaning of the connection must be sought for in tribal conceptions.

It seems to be quite clear that in saying that the twelve-hyndeman’s oath was an oath of 120 hides, and the ceorl’s presumably of 20 hides, we have not yet necessarily struck the real train of thought underlying the connection between oaths and hides. For it is absurd to think that the twelve-hyndeman could pretend to the occupation or possession of 120 hides or family holdings, or the ceorl to 20 hides. They could do no such thing. The ceorl, in later times at all events, who had the twy-hynde wergeld was ‘the ceorl who sits on gafol land’--a gafol-gelda on some one else’s land. And to the great-grandson of the ceorl who had risen to five hides, the continued possession of five hides was sufficient to qualify him for a _sithcund_ status worth a wergeld of 1200 shillings or 2000 _thrymsas_.

The question, therefore, needs closer examination if we would rightly understand the meaning underlying the distinction between the twy-hynde and twelve-hynde social status.

Let us then in the first place try to understand the meaning of the word _hynde_ which gives to the distinction between twy-hynde and twelve-hynde its important significance.

[Sidenote: The meaning of ‘hynden.’]

The word separated from its prefix apparently occurs in only two places in the Laws. It occurs for the first time in an important clause of the Laws of Ine. And once more it occurs in the Laws of Athelstan, in the ‘Judicia Civitatis Londoniæ.’ A word which occurs again in Anglo-Saxon laws after an interval of more than two centuries may and perhaps must have had a well-known original significance as a legal term though found nowhere else in Anglo-Saxon literature.

[Sidenote: The set of oath-helpers.]

In Ine s. 54 the word is used twice. The first part of the clause, which has already been quoted, is as follows:--

(54) He who is charged with werfæhthe [man-slaying] and is willing to deny the slaying on oath, then shall there be _in the hynden_ one King’s oath of xxx hides as well for a gesithcund man as for a ceorlisc man whichsoever it may be.

In this first mention of the _hynden_ the word must mean the set of oath-helpers supporting their kinsman with their oaths, and the clause lays down the rule that in every such set of oath-helpers in the case of ‘slaying’ there must be a ‘King’s oath of thirty hides.’ But what is this King’s oath of thirty hides which is to be in the _hynden_ of oath-helpers of both the twy-hynde and twelve-hynde man in case of man-slaying?

[Sidenote: The 30 hides oath of the King’s thane.]

In the Compact between Alfred and Guthrum is a clause, already quoted, immediately following the statement of the wergelds of Dane and English, and the declaration that they were to be ‘equally dear,’ which seems to be almost a repetition of the clause in Ine’s Laws, but without using the word _hynden_.

(3) If a King’s thane be charged with man-slaying, if he means to clear himself by oath, let him do it with twelve King’s thanes, and if a lesser man than a King’s thane be charged, let him clear himself with eleven of his like and with one _King’s thane_.

We have seen that the King’s thane is mentioned in the Laws of Ine (s. 45), and that his social position was much higher than that of the ordinary _gesithcundman_. The bot for his _burg-bryce_ was sixty scillings--_i.e._ halfway between that of the ealdorman at eighty scillings and that of the gesithcundman having land at thirty-five scillings.

The King’s thane’s oath seems, then, to be what is meant by the King’s oath of thirty hides in the Laws of Ine. But the King’s thane’s oath of thirty hides being the oath of a class higher than that of the gesithcundman, how is it that the oath of the latter could be a 120 hide oath?--_i.e._ worth four times as much as that of his superior, the King’s thane.

At first the two statements seem to clash, but on reflection a spark of light seems to come from the collision. The King’s thane’s oath in this case is only _one oath in the hynden of twelve_ oath-helpers supporting the twelve-hynde or twy-hynde man. When a King’s thane was himself charged with man-slaying the later law declares that he must clear himself with twelve King’s thane’s oaths. The full oath of the whole hynden, himself and his co-swearers, would therefore be equivalent to an oath of 360 hides--_i.e._ worth three times the 120 hide oath of--may we not now say?--the twelve oath-helpers forming the _hynden_ of the gesithcundman.

[Sidenote: The single oath of the twelve-hyndeman was of 10 hides.]

The King’s thane’s official position was sufficient to justify the threefold value of his oath and that of the several oaths of his hynden. And if the 120 hide oath of the twelve-hyndeman be the full oath of himself and his hynden of oath-helpers, then his single oath would be a ten hide oath, which is much more within reason. The analogy would be complete were it not for the necessity of including in the hynden of the gesithcundman a King’s thane’s oath of thirty hides; but this may have been an afterthought. The mention of it in the law of Ine is in itself presumptive evidence that it was a new and an additional requirement beyond what Wessex custom had originally required.[258]

[Sidenote: The oath of himself and oath-helpers was of 120 hides.]

So far, then, it seems to be pretty clear that the 120 hide oath of the twelve-hyndeman was the twelvefold oath of himself and his hynden of oath-helpers, each of whose single oaths was, like his own, a ten hide oath.

[Sidenote: The oath-helpers were kinsmen.]

Adhering, then, to the meaning of _hynden_ as the set of oath-helpers, we have next to keep in mind that the oath-helpers were naturally kinsmen representing the slayer’s kindred and their responsibility for the wergeld of the person slain if their kinsman was the slayer, and by this consideration we are once more thrown back upon tribal custom.

[Sidenote: The twy-hyndeman and leysing’s want of kindred.]

And when in the Compact between Alfred and Guthrum we see the ‘ceorl who sits on gafol-land’ put in the same position as the Norse ‘leysing’ or newly made freeman whose kindred was imperfect, howbeit in course of being widened by each generation, we seem again to be put upon the scent that the twy-hynde condition of the Saxon ceorl may also originally have had something to do with his imperfect kindred.

When further, in the remarkable fragment already quoted, we see the Saxon ceorl himself rising in the social scale, getting land ‘to the King’s utware,’ having a ‘coat of mail, helmet, and over-gilded sword’ and doing direct service to the King, until at last, his son’s son having had that land in succession, the great-grandchildren become of _sithcund_ kin with twelve-hynde wergelds, the scent seems to lie all the more strongly in the direction of the tribal rules of kindred. For it is as though we had watched the process of the growth of kindred in this case till the _sithcund_ condition was reached, and the full hynden had been produced, thus raising the twy-hynde into a twelve-hynde man.

The leysing, we learned from the Norse laws, being a newly made freedman, had at first no freeborn kin from whom he could inherit or who could inherit from him. He had no one of his kin to swear for him or to fight for him till he had sons and grandsons. For three generations the descendants were leysings still. And though during that time kinsmen enough may have grown up around them to swear for them yet still their oaths may well have been reckoned of lower value than those of the hauld, each of whose oath-helpers had a full kindred behind him to support him. It took another three generations to put the leysing in this position.

[Sidenote: The full oath of a man with 12 oath-helpers of full kindred twelve-hynde.]

There may, then, perhaps be involved in this matter of imperfect and perfect kindred a principle of tribal custom originally underlying the terms twelve-hynde and twy-hynde. The oath of full value under tribal usage would be the oath of a man with a full kindred, _i.e._ with twelve hyndens, each of full kindred, behind him. Only with a full kindred to support him was his protection complete, because without it he could not secure a full oath of twelve sufficiently influential and powerful oath-helpers. If he could claim from his kindred such an oath, then he may well have been considered properly a twelve-hyndeman, because such an oath meant practically that he had the support and protection of twelve hyndens of kinsmen in case of need.

This might at first sight seem an unnecessarily large requirement if the _oath_ were regarded only as clearing a man from the charge of man-slaying. But going back to tribal usage it seems no longer too large when the alternative is considered. The alternative was the ordeal and, on failure of the test of innocence, the feud or the payment of a wergeld of, as we have seen, normally one hundred head of cattle. In either case the slayer was powerless if alone. He was powerful only in having a full kindred behind him bound by ties of kinship and tribal usage first to swear for him instead of his being put to the ordeal, and secondly to fight for him or to assist him in finding the hundred head of cattle required to buy off the feud, according to the proverb ‘Buy off the spear or bear it.’ In either case the completeness of his kindred was the measure of the power of protection behind him.

[Sidenote: The oath of the ceorl worth only one sixth of that of the twelve-hyndeman and thus only twy-hynde.]

The twy-hyndeman considered as the leysing or freedman would not be in this strong position. His social status, resulting from his imperfect kindred, must be a low one. If he slew a twelve-hyndeman, from the point of view of the feud he would be helpless. The kindred of the twelve-hyndeman slain by him could not be satisfied merely by the slaughter of an inferior. Tribal custom of the Continental Saxons allowed vengeance for homicide by a thrall to be taken upon seven thralls. Under Mercian usage, as we have seen, it had been settled that the oath of the ceorl was to be taken as worth one sixth of that of the twelve-hyndeman, because the life of six ceorls was held to be equivalent in the matter of vengeance to that of one twelve-hyndeman. And thus it may be that, in the case of man-slaying, his oath and that of his oath-helpers, all of inferior value, came, under Anglo-Saxon custom, to be reckoned in comparison with that of the man of full kindred as worth only ‘two hyndens’ as against his twelve.

In the other passage in which the word ‘hynden’ occurs it has not so distinctly the meaning of ‘oath-helpers.’ It is not used in relation to homicide or wergelds, but still its use and its meaning are instructive.

[Sidenote: The hynden-men of the city frith-gegildas.]

The use of the word in the ‘Judicia Civitatis Lundoniæ’[259] is in connection with the organisation of ‘frith-gegildas’ for the prevention and punishment of theft. These ‘frith-gegildas’ were groups or ‘hyndens’ with a common purse. And contributions were to be made for the common benefit. In the eighth clause it was enacted that the hynden-men should be collected every month, each twelve to a common meal. ‘And if it should then happen that any kin be so strong and so great within land or without land whether xii-hynde or twy-hynde that they refuse us our right and stand up in defence of a thief, that we all of us ride thereto with the reeve within whose “manung” it may be.’

These hyndens were not directly groups of kinsmen and oath-helpers, but they were artificial groups formed and bound by a pledge for mutual protection, and the use of the word ‘hynden’ in this sense is significant. There were hyndens of oath-helpers under tribal custom, and now in the city hyndens of frith-gegildas were formed for mutual defence against powerful kindreds outside their city who were in the habit of protecting thieves from justice.

This was the way apparently that a substitute was found in the towns for the absent kindreds. And as time went on these artificial hyndens of _gegildas_ or _congildones_ no doubt in some measure took the place of the hyndens of kinsmen in cases of homicide as well as in cases of theft.

[Sidenote: Wealth and fullness of kindred often concurrent.]

Naturally in the course of time the possession of property and social status would gradually take the place of the completeness of kindred, and the two elements in status would easily be associated together in common estimation. The value of a man’s oath would depend more and more on the number of hides of land he was reckoned to possess, or for which he was responsible to the ‘King’s utware.’

If we may follow Schmid’s translation of ‘utware’ as ‘Heerbann’ and picture to ourselves the ceorl who had risen to the social position of a man with a kindred and having five hides to the King’s gafol, with his coat of mail and helmet and over-gilded sword coming up at the call of the King to the fyrd with so many followers, whether kinsmen or tenants, from the five hides under his charge and so becoming ‘gesithcund’ in regard to the King’s service, then there would be force in the further clause which declares that, although he had acquired a kindred and a coat of mail and helmet and over-gilded sword, yet _if he have not that land, he is still but a ceorl_.

The power and strength and status of a person would still depend upon the combination of the two elements, and both would have to be reckoned with. A passage has already been quoted in which the possibility is admitted of a kindred becoming so powerful--_magna et fortis_--as to defy the King’s law and defend the thief.[260] There is another passage relating to breaches of the peace in Kent in which the two sources of this power of defiance are mentioned together. The dangerous person may either be _so rich_ or be of _so great a kindred_ that he could not be punished--‘adeo dives vel tantæ parentelæ ut castigari non possit.’[261]

VI. THE GESITHCUND AND CEORLISC CLASSES IN THEIR CONNECTION WITH LAND.

Pursuing the question of division of classes mentioned in the Dooms of Ine we turn now to the consideration of the most prominent distinction which runs through the clauses of the Dooms, viz. that of _gesithcund_ and _ceorlisc_.

Roughly speaking, the two distinctions may have been gradually coming more and more to mean much the same thing. As a rule no doubt in King Ine’s time ceorlisc men were twy-hynde and gesithcund men twelve-hynde.

[Sidenote: The unit of 10 hides of land.]

The same class which, regarded from the point of view of the wergeld, possessed completeness of kindred and the twelve-hynde oath, when looked at from another point of view was gesithcund, _i.e._ more or less directly in the service of the King and belonging to the official and landed class. So that the value of the oath of both twelve-hynde and gesithcund men may have become easily associated with a territorial unit of ten hides of land.

Now, the fact of the connection of the value of the oath with ten hides of land is pretty good proof that for practical purposes and in common usage the holding of ten hides was looked upon as in some way or other a typical unit of holding of the gesithcund or landed class. There is nothing new in this suggestion, but its lack of novelty does not detract from its value. And an examination from a tribal point of view of the isolated passages in the Dooms of Ine relating to this typical holding of ten hides may possibly throw further and useful light upon the position of the gesithcund class.

While we speak of the gesithcund class as almost equivalent to the landed class it is obvious that it would be wrong to consider every gesithcundman as a landowner. Attention has already been called to the following clause:

(51) If a gesithcundman owning land neglect the fyrd, let him pay 120_s._ and forfeit his land. One not owning land 60_s._, a _ceorlisc_ man 30_s._ as fyrd-wite.

The gesithcundman _not_ possessing land may either be one who has forfeited his land or a cadet of the class not having yet attained to the position of landholding and yet being gesithcund by birth.

Nor would it do to let modern notions of landownership intrude themselves so far into the question as to make us regard the gesithcund and landed class as a class of land-_owners_ in the modern sense. If the typical holding of ten hides be that of the gesithcundman, we may have to regard him rather as a gesith of the King put into possession of the ten hides by way of stewardship than as anything like the absolute owner of them.

[Sidenote: Ten hides the unit for food rents to the chieftain or King.]

The typical holding of ten hides may perhaps be usefully regarded, from a fiscal point of view, as a unit for purposes of revenue, at a time when that revenue under tribal custom consisted chiefly of food rents paid in kind for the King’s or the chieftain’s use.

Clause 70 of the Dooms of Ine fixes in detail the food rent of ‘ten hides’ ‘to fostre’ or ‘on feorm.’

If the unit of ten hides were not the customary unit for these food rents on the Royal domains why should the details of the food rent of ten hides have been made the subject of an isolated clause like this?

[Sidenote: Land grants of 10 hides.]

Again, if we turn to the grants made by King Ine to the monasteries, they become intelligible if the system of management of the Royal domains in units and multiples of ten hides may be understood to underlie them. When Ine grants to Aldhelm, then Abbot of Malmesbury, ‘45 cassati’ in the county of Wilts, the grant is found to consist of groups of ‘manentes’ in four different places. And the groups consist of 5, 20, 10, and 10.[262] When Ine makes a grant to Abbot Bernald of land in Somersetshire it consists of three groups of 20, 20, and 20 _cassati_ or _manentes_ from three different estates.[263] And when he makes a similar grant to Glastonbury it consists of 10, 10, 20, 20 hides and one hide in five different places in Somersetshire.[264]

So also when Bede mentions the donations by King Oswy to the Abbess Hilda of 12 _possessiuncula terrarum_ he adds that six were in the province of Deira and six in Bernicia and that each of them consisted of 10 _familiæ_, so that in all there were 120.[265]

Now it would seem that as ealdormen were set over shires so gesithcund men may have been set over smaller units of 10 hides or multiples of 10 hides, holding them as lænland, not only for services rendered, but also with some kind of subordinate official or even judicial functions.

[Sidenote: Official position of the gesithcundman.]

Schmid long ago pointed out that the translator of Bede in six passages translated the Latin _comes_ by ‘gesith’ or ‘gesithcundman.’[266] This seems to imply that his position was in some sense an official one, subordinate indeed to the ealdorman’s, as we may also learn from the translator of Bede. For while he translates the ‘_villa comitis_’ of Bede as the ‘_gesith’s hus_’ he translates the ‘_villa regis_’ as the residence of the king’s ealdor (‘botl cyninges ealdor’).[267]

We found in s. 45 of King Ine’s Laws above quoted that the gesithcundman’s burg-bryce was thirty-five scillings while the ealdorman’s was eighty scillings. Still, though the lowest official in the scale, it was something that he should be named with the King, the ealdorman, and the King’s thane as having a burg-bryce according to which he was to make legal denial (ansacan).

The omission from this clause as to burg-bryce of classes below him seems to mark that while even the ceorlisc man--_i.e._ even the gafol-gelda or gebur--was responsible for the peace within his ‘flet’ and received a fight-wite when it was broken by fighting in it, the gesithcundman belonged to the class with some sort of extra jurisdiction beyond that which attached to every man whose homestead was by long tribal custom a sacred precinct.

[Sidenote: His judicial and magisterial duties.]

And there is a clause in the Laws of Ine which seems to refer to the something like judicial duties of the gesithcundman, for it shows that neglect of them causing a suit which he ought to have settled to be carried to a higher court--before the ealdorman or the King--deprived him of his right to share in the ‘wite-ræden,’ whatever they were, appertaining to the suit.

Gif gesiðcund mon þingað wið cyning oþþe wið kyninges ealdormannan for his inhiwan oþþe wið his hlaford for þeowe oþþe for frige nah he þær nane witerædenne se gesið forþon he him nolde ær yfles gestieran æt ham.

(50) If a gesithcundman has a suit with the King or with the King’s ealdorman for his household or with his lord for bond or for free; he (the gesith) shall not there have any ‘witeræden’ because he would not correct him before of his evil deeds at home.

That he had special duties to discharge in connection with the ‘fyrd’ was shown not only by one of the qualifications of the gesithcund status being the possession of a coat of mail, helmet, and over-gilded sword, but also by the fyrd-wite of 120 scillings and the loss of his land, if he neglected the fyrd.

[Sidenote: His duty to secure the King’s gafol from his land.]

That he was put into his landed position under conditions to secure the management of the land for the provision of the King’s gafol is shown by the following clauses, which in regard to one important particular at least point out what was expected of him and further suggest that there was reason to fear that sometimes he might be inclined to desert his post without having performed the conditions upon which his land was held.

_Be gesiðcundes monnes fære._

_If a gesithcund leaves [the land]._

Gif gesiðcund man fare þonne mot he habban his gerefan mid him ⁊ his smið ⁊ his cild-festran.

(63) If a gesithcundman leaves, then may he have with him his reeve [?] and smith and his foster-nurse.

Seþe hæfð xx hida se sceal tæcnan xii hida gesettes landes þonne he faran wille.

(64) He who has 20 hides, he shall show 12 hides of _geset land_ if he want to leave.

Seþe hæfð x hida se sceal tæcnan vi hida gesettes landes.

(65) He who has 10 hides shall show 6 hides of _geset land_.

Seþe hæbbe þreo hida tæcne oðres healfes.

(66) If he have three hides let him show one and a half.

[Sidenote: He must settle tenants on the land.]

These clauses suggest very clearly that the gesithcundman had been entrusted with the ten hides or twenty hides, or sometimes a smaller number, under the special obligation to provide the food rent by settling tenants upon the land.

[Sidenote: Method of settling gafol-geldas and geburs on yardlands.]

Let us pass, then, to what evidence the Dooms of Ine afford as to the customary method of settling tenants on the land.

The very next sections to those just quoted are as follows:--

_Be gyrde londes._

_Of a yardland._

Gif mon geþingað gyrde landes oþþe mære to ræde-gafole ⁊ geereð, gif se hlaford him wile þ land aræran to weorce ⁊ to gafole, ne þearf he him onfon gif he him nan botl ne selð. ⁊ þolie þara æcra.

(67) If a man agrees for a yardland or more to gafol and ploughs it, if the lord wants to raise the land _to work and to gafol_, he need not take it upon him if he [the lord] does not give him a _botl_, and let him give up (?) the acres.

Gif mon gesiðcundne monnan adrife, fordrife þy _botle, næs þære setene_.

(68) If a man drive off a gesithcundman, let him be driven from the _botl_, not the _setene_.

[Sidenote: The yardland was the usual holding of the _gebur_, with a pair of oxen.]

Working from the known to the unknown, in a former volume we found that under the open-field system of husbandry the hide at the time of the Domesday survey and earlier was generally held to contain four virgates or yardlands, and that so far as arable land was concerned each yardland was a bundle, so to speak, of about thirty scattered strips or acres. Tracing the yardland further back, the interesting point was gained from the tenth-century document known as the ‘Rectitudines &c.,’ that ‘in some regions’ the custom in allotting a yardland to a tenant called a ‘_gebur_’ was to give him with his yardland to _land-setene_ seven acres already sown and a _pair of oxen_, and certain other things theoretically by way of loan, so that on the gebur’s death everything returned to the lord, though in practice the holding and land-setene were no doubt continued to his successor on payment of a ‘relief.’ And this system of settling gafol-geldas and geburs, or whatever such tenants might be locally called, on yardlands seems to be that alluded to in the Dooms of Ine. The clauses incidentally referring to gafol-geldas, geburs, and yardlands thus become intelligible and important in the light of the later evidence. This I endeavoured to show in a former volume.[268]

[Sidenote: The hide of four yardlands agricultural.]

Now, this system of settling tenants on yardlands by allotting to each a pair of oxen, so that four of them should be able to combine in forming the common plough-team of the hide, obviously belongs to a time when agriculture had become sufficiently important for the unit of occupation and so of gafol-paying and services to be generally agricultural rather than pastoral. But while the _hide_ thus seems to have been connected in the Dooms of Ine mainly with arable farming, it does not follow that it always had been so everywhere. The word ‘hide’ may have originally been applied to a holding devoted more to the grazing of cattle than the growing of corn.

The remarkable document which has been called ‘The Tribal Hidage,’ to the meaning and date of which Mr. W. J. Corbett[269] has opened our eyes, shows that forty or fifty years before the date of the Dooms of Ine the whole of England then subject to the Anglo-Saxons was, as we should say, rated in hides according to its tribes or mægthes, possibly for the fiscal purposes of the Bretwaldaship. And it would seem likely that under the common designation of hides pastoral as well as agricultural units for food rents must have been included. This seems to be indicated by the fact that the hides and virgates of the pastoral districts of West Wales in the Exon Domesday book are many times greater than those of other parts of England, and vary very much in area.

[Sidenote: In pastoral districts co-aration of the waste.]

In the pastoral or grazing districts recently conquered from West Wales early tribal usage would be very likely to survive. And there may well have been some continuity in the methods of tribal agriculture. Judging from what we know from the Cymric Codes, there might not yet be permanent division of the fields into strips and virgates but rather co-aration of such portions of the waste each year as suited the requirements of the tribesmen.

[Sidenote: The team of 8 oxen said not to be German.]

The open-field system of agriculture was in its main principles and chief methods common to German and Celtic tribes. But we are told that the Germans knew nothing of co-operative ploughing and the team of eight oxen on which the agricultural hidage of England was so clearly based. For the team of eight oxen we must go to the Cymric Codes and the practice in the Isle of Man and Scotland. It was common to these Celtic regions, even to its details--the yoke of four oxen abreast and the driver walking backwards in front of the team.[270] In such a matter as the method of ploughing there may well have been continuity.

We seem to see in the Laws of Ine the process going on of transition from the tribal form of the open-field system--the co-aration of the waste--to the more fixed forms of settled and permanent agriculture.

[Sidenote: The allotment of stock and homestead by the lord to the gebur was the basis of the tenancy.]

Thus, without pressing analogies too far, there may be a root of tribal custom discernible even in the system of settling geburs on yardlands. Something very much like it was followed on the Continent under Roman usage. But the case of the veteran to whom a pair of oxen with seed of two kinds was given as his outfit only partly resembled the case of the gebur. In the case of the gebur the outfit of oxen remained in theory the property of the lord, and returned to him on the death of the tenant. This was the essential point which created the semi-servile tenancy. With the homestead went the ‘setene’ or outfit and the corresponding obligation not only of gafol but also of week-work, and out of the peculiar relation so established may have grown up in West Wales, as in Wales itself and Ireland, very easily the doctrine that after its continuance for four generations the tenant became _adscriptus glebæ_.

The allotment of stock by the Irish chieftain formed, as we have seen, in a cattle-breeding rather than an agricultural community the traditional tie between himself and his tenants, whether tribesmen or strangers. The Cymric chieftain of a kindred followed very nearly the same traditional practice when he gave to the young tribesman on his attaining the age of fourteen his _da_ (or allotment of cattle) for his maintenance, thereby establishing the relation of ‘man and kin’ between him and the chief.

The same tribal principles were, moreover, applied to strangers both in Ireland and Wales. The Irish ‘fuidhir’ thus settled on the chieftain’s land became, as we have seen, after four generations _adscriptus glebæ_, and so did the _Aillt_ or _Alltud_ settled on the Cymric chieftain’s land. And the same number of generations attached the _nativus_ to the land under early Scotch law.

Now, if under tribal usage this was so, it need not be surprising that in the newly conquered districts of West Wales or more generally in Wessex at the time of King Ine, when the extension of agriculture was an immediate necessity, something like the same traditional system should continue or come again naturally into use, producing something like the same kind of dependence of one class upon the other.

[Sidenote: This system of settlement very general.]

It is necessary to point out that this method of settling tenants on yardlands with an outfit of a pair of oxen &c. was more or less general, because doubts have been recently thrown upon it. Its prevalence as a custom does not rest entirely on the evidence of the ‘Rectitudines’ but on several incidental mentions of it in various and distant quarters.

[Sidenote: Kent.]

For instance, in the will of a reeve named Abba of Kent (about A.D. 833)[271] is the gift of a ‘half swulung’--_i.e._ what elsewhere would have been described as a half hide--and with that land were to go four oxen, two cows, and fifty sheep, that is two oxen and one cow and twenty-five sheep to each _gioc_ or yardland.

[Sidenote: Glastonbury.]

And again, the Inquisition of Glastonbury (A.D. 1189)[272] describes the holder of a yardland almost in the same terms as those used in the ‘Rectitudines’ in the description of the _gebur_. He is said to hold a yardland for 32_d._ (probably 1_d._ per acre), and every Monday he must plough a half-acre and harrow it, and he works every day in the week but on Sunday. He has from his lord one heifer (_averum_) and two oxen and one cow and seven acres of corn sown and three acres of oats (to start with)--ten acres in all sown--and six sheep and one ram. King Ine made grants of land, as we have seen, to Glastonbury, and it is interesting to find the custom of allowing two oxen, one cow, and six sheep to the yardland as described in the ‘Rectitudines’ still going on in West Wales five hundred years after Ine’s time on the estates of the Abbey.

[Sidenote: Winchester.]

Take again the charter MLXXIX. mentioned by Kemble (i. p. 216). This charter shows that the Bishop of Winchester (A.D. 902) had leased fifteen hides of land to a relative of the Bishop, requiring that he must settle there (_inberthan_)[273] men who would be fixed (_hamettan_) to the place. He himself had ‘hamet’ Lufe and her three bairns, and Luhan and his six bairns, and these must remain on the land whoever might hold it. There were also three _witetheows_ _bur_bærde and three more _theow_bærde belonging to the Bishop, with their descendants (_and hire team_). At this date the settling of new tenants (may we not say?) some of them as geburs and some as theows was still going on in Wessex A.D. 902.

It is quite true that the holders of these yardlands are not everywhere always described as _geburs_. But we are dealing with the _thing_, not the name. The word _gebur_, however, was of much wider use than merely in one or two localities.

[Sidenote: Tyddenham.]

It is not only in the ‘Rectitudines’ that the gebur and his services are mentioned. On the Tyddenham Manor of King Edwy on the ‘geset-land’ there were ‘geburs’ with yardlands (gyrdagafollandes)--as mentioned in the former volume (p. 150). And other examples may be quoted.

[Sidenote: Shaftesbury. Hatfield.]

In the will of Wynfled[274] there is mention of lands at Shaftesbury and ‘the geburs that on those gafollands sit’ (_þara gebura di on þam gafollandes sittað_). And as incidental evidence that the geburs became in course of time _adscripti glebæ_, it is worth while to remember that early in the eleventh century the monks of Ely in connection with their Manor of Hatfield kept record of the children of the geburs on their estate who had married with others of neighbouring manors, so that they might not lose sight of them and their rights over them. And the importance with which their rights were regarded is emphasised by the fact that the record was kept upon the back of an ancient copy of the Gospels belonging presumably to the altar of St. Etheldreda.[275]

Now, if such in part was the relation between the gesithcundman and the tenants of the yardlands of his ‘geset-land’ arising from the allotment or loan of stock, may not something of the same kind lie at the root of the relation between the gesithcundman himself and the King? Lord as he may have been over his ceorlisc gafol-geldas, was not the gesithcundman himself a servant of the King looking after the King’s gafol, a kind of middleman, tied to his post with the ealdorman above him in the hierarchy of Royal service, liable to lose his land if he neglected his duty?

[Sidenote: How far the gebur was _adscriptus glebæ_.]

It is an interesting question how far the ceorlisc class were _adscripti glebæ_ under the Laws of Ine, but when we try to find this out we discover that both classes seem to be under some kind of restraint as to ‘going away’ (_fære_). If a gesithcundman ‘fare’ we have seen under what restrictions it must be. There is another clause which deals with the case of persons who shall ‘fare’ without leave from their lords.

Gif hwa fare unaliefed fram his hlaforde oþþe on oðre scire hine bestele ⁊ hine mon geahsige fare þær he ær wæs ⁊ geselle his hlaforde lx scill.

(s. 39) If any one go from his lord without leave or steal himself away into another shire and he be discovered, let him go where he was before and pay to his lord 60 scillings.

Judged in the light of later laws to the same or nearly similar effect, this clause must probably be regarded rather as early evidence of the relation between lord and man established generally for the maintenance of the public peace, than as bearing directly upon the question of the attachment of the smaller class of tenants to the soil.[276] And yet if the relation of the ordinary freeman to, let us say, the ealdorman of the shire was such that he might not move into another shire without leave, and until it was ascertained whether his action was _bona fide_, or perhaps with the object to escape from debt or vengeance for a wrong committed, the restriction would be likely to be still stronger when a tenant was under fixed obligations to his lord, or had, by taking a yardland and homestead, settled on his lord’s land and accepted stock under conditions of gafol and week-work regulated by general usage.

The idea of freedom as a kind of masterful independence of the individual was not one inherited from tribal modes of thought, nor likely to be fostered by the circumstances of the times which followed upon the Anglo-Saxon conquest of Britain. When this fact is fully recognised, the gulf between the gesithcund and ceorlisc classes does not seem so deep, after all, as it would be if, instead of approaching the question from a tribal point of view, we were looking for allodial landowners on the one hand and expecting the ceorl to be a member of a village community of independent peasant proprietors on the other hand.

[Sidenote: The king’s food rents or gafol how paid.]

But we are not doing this, and, returning to the gesithcundman, perhaps we have after all taken for granted quite enough that the general environment in Wessex was agricultural rather than pastoral. Even as regards King Ine himself, there may have been a good deal of the tribal chieftain still left in his relations to his gesithcund followers and officials. We have spoken of his tribal food rents; but how did he gather them?

[Sidenote: The _firma unius noctis_.]

No doubt the King’s gafol may partly have been paid in money. But so far as it was paid in kind it must have been carried by his tenants to his Winchester palace, or one of his other manors, according to the system prevalent at the time, followed for centuries after in West Wales, viz. the system of the ‘night’s entertainment’ (_firma unius noctis_)--a system followed by tribal chieftains and their Royal successors in Scandinavia as well as in Britain.

When the Domesday survey was made of what was once West Wales there was found still existing, especially in Dorsetshire, the survival of a very practical arrangement of Royal food rents which may have been in use in King Ine’s time and date back possibly before the West Saxon conquests.

Some portions of the ‘terra Regis’ scattered about the county of Dorset are grouped in the survey so that each group might supply the _firma unius noctis_, the money equivalent of which is stated to be 104_l._, _i.e._ 2_l._ per night’s entertainment for one night each week in the year. This mode of providing the _firma unius noctis_ is illustrated by the legend which represents King Ine himself and his queen as moving from manor to manor for each night’s entertainment, their moveable palace of poles and curtains being carried before them from place to place upon sumpter mules.

Now, if we might regard the gesithcundman as one of a class to whom ten hides or twenty hides had been allotted by King Ine on a system providing in this practical way _inter alia_ for the night’s entertainments, it would be natural that the food rent of the unit of ten hides should be fixed. And further, it would be natural that if the gesithcundman should wish to throw up his post and desert the land entrusted to his management he should be restricted, as we have seen, by conditions intended to secure that the provision for the King’s entertainment or gafol in lieu of it should not materially suffer.

[Sidenote: The gesithcundman sometimes evicted.]

We have seen that as the ealdorman was to lose his ‘shire’ if he let go a thief, so the gesithcundman was to pay a fyrdwite, and to lose his _land_ if he neglected the _fyrd_. It was possible, then, that he might have to be evicted. And a clause in the Dooms of Ine has already been quoted which seems to refer to the eviction of a gesithcundman.

Be gesiðcundes monnes dræfe of londe.

(68) If a gesithcundman be driven off land.

Gif mon gesiðcundne monnan adrife, fordrife þy botle næs þære setene.

If one drive off a gesithcundman, let him be driven forth from the homestead (_botl_), not the _setene_.

If he was evicted he was to be driven from the _botl_ or homestead, not the _setene_. What can the _setene_ have been?

[Sidenote: Were the stock and crops always his own?]

The land granted or intrusted to the gesithcundman for the performance of corresponding duties is not likely to have been mere waste. Part of it might surely already be ‘geset land,’ let to tenants of yardlands. On the rest of it still held in demesne there would probably be some herds of cattle. In these early days the cattle and corn on the land were far more valuable than the mere land itself. If, therefore, a fixed food rent was payable to the King, may it not be inferred that sometimes the typical holding of ten hides included the stock let with it, just as, according to the ‘Rectitudines,’ the yardland did? Following strictly the analogy, the original stock on the land and in the hands of the tenants would be the ‘setene’ of the gesithcundman, theoretically, like the land itself, belonging, not to him, but to his lord? It might have been sometimes so. But at the same time there might be other cases in which the possession of cattle may have led to the tenure. The ceorl or the wealh who had risen to having five hides may have brought the cattle or setene with him. And to evict him from his own cattle and crops as well as from the _botl_ might be unjust.

The text as it stands seems to mean that the gesithcundman is not to be evicted _from_ the _setene_, and the clause seems to be intended to protect his rights and to prevent his being evicted from his own stock and crops on the land. The clause is not clear, but it adds to the sense that in the case of the gesithcundman we are not dealing with a landowner who can do what he likes with his own, any more than in the case of the ceorlisc gafol-geldas we are dealing with a class of peasant proprietors.

[Sidenote: Position of the two classes in Ine’s time.]

Difficult as it may be to come to a clear understanding of some of these isolated passages in the Dooms of Ine, they may at least have saved us from the pitfall of a fatal anachronism. Their difficulties, forcing us to think, may in some degree have helped us to realise the point of view from which the two classes--gesithcund and ceorlisc--were regarded in early Wessex legislation.

[Sidenote: The gesithcund class the landed class. The ceorlisc class the tenant class paying gafol to the landed class.]

Throughout Wessex, speaking generally, they seem to have been regarded as the two prominent classes in practical agricultural life. The general facts of everyday observation marked off the gesithcundman as belonging to the ruling class, holding land direct from the King as the King’s gesith, while the ceorlisc man, speaking generally, in his relation to land was the gafol-gelda or gebur sometimes probably holding his yardland on the King’s demesne, but mostly perhaps and more and more often as the tenant of the gesithcundman. This, it would seem, had become so general that in King Alfred’s day and perhaps even in King Ine’s, ignoring the exceptional classes between the gesithcund and the other class, there was no absurdity in King Alfred’s claiming that equally dear with the Danish lysing the ‘ceorl who sits on gafol land’ should have a twy-hynde wergeld.

The division into gesithcund and ceorlisc classes was doubtless a somewhat rough and wide generalisation. There were, we know, men without land who belonged to the gesithcund class, and ceorls who were not tenants of yardlands. And even among the tenants of yardlands some paid gafol only and others both gafol and week-work. But for our purpose the fact to be noted is that the generalisation was sufficiently near the truth for it to be made.

[Sidenote: The ceorlisc class would include newly made freedmen.]

We must not infer that these two classes included strictly the whole population. Judging from Continental evidence, Wessex must have been very exceptional indeed if there were not everywhere numerous _theows_ or thralls. From this class Anglo-Saxon wills and other documents show that there was a constant stream of freedmen or theows who by emancipation were allowed to creep up into the ceorlisc class, partly as the result of Christian impulse, and partly probably from the lack of tenants to occupy the yardlands left vacant by the desolation caused by constant wars.

Thus while, broadly speaking, the gesithcund and the ceorlisc classes may have corresponded to the twelve-hynde and twy-hynde classes, they were not absolutely identical. The two lines of distinction had not the same origin and did not run absolutely parallel. But they may well have worked in the same direction. The original distinction founded upon the possession or absence of the perfect kindred and ‘hyndens of oath-helpers’ was rooted in tribal instincts and never wholly extinguished throughout Anglo-Saxon history. The gesithcund class, most perfect in their kindred and nearest in their relation to the King, influenced perhaps by traditions of Roman land management, naturally grew up into a twelve-hynde and landed class, while the ceorlisc class, recruited from outside and from below, just as naturally became their tenants.

[Sidenote: The gulf between the two classes existed in King Alfred’s time.]

Thus in England, as elsewhere, we may easily believe that the gulf between classes resulting from tribal instincts and confirmed by difference in wergelds was hardened and widened by the conditions of landholding in the conquered country, which tended to raise the one class more and more into manorial lords and depress the other into more or less servile tenants. The Compact between Alfred and Guthrum affords the strongest evidence that already in King Alfred’s time the process was far enough advanced for a pretty hard line to be drawn between them.

VII. COMPARISON OF WESSEX AND MERCIAN WERGELDS WITH THOSE OF CONTINENTAL TRIBES.

Before passing from the Wessex to the Kentish laws it may be well to mark the position to which the evidence hitherto examined has brought us with regard to the amount of the wergelds.

[Sidenote: Continental wergelds of 200 and 160 gold solidi for the full freeman.]

We have had again and again to come back to the question of the status of the twelve-hynde and twy-hynde classes as shown by their wergelds. By the Compact between King Alfred and Guthrum the English wergelds were brought into line with Norse and other Continental wergelds. The statement of the higher wergeld in gold made possible a comparison of the Anglo-Saxon with Continental wergelds.

The result of the inquiry into the Continental wergelds of the full freeman was that they seemed to fall very distinctly into two classes--the Frankish and Norse wergeld of 200 gold solidi, on the one hand, and the Frisian, Saxon, Alamannic, Bavarian, and possibly Burgundian wergeld of 160 gold solidi on the other hand.

The ratio between these two wergelds is as 5:4.

Now, this is exactly the ratio between the two twelve-hynde wergelds of the Anglo-Saxon laws, _i.e._ of Wessex and of Mercia. Both were of 1200 scillings, but the Wessex scilling was of five pence and the Mercian of four pence.

[Sidenote: The Wessex and Mercian wergelds ancient.]

Finding twelve-hynde and twy-hynde wergelds in the Laws of Ine, we seem to be bound to regard the distinctions between the two classes as going back to a time two centuries at least before the inroads of the Northmen.

The position of the Dooms of Ine as they have come down to us annexed to the Laws of King Alfred might possibly have raised a doubt as to whether the incidental mention of the wergelds might not have been inserted in the text by the scribes of King Alfred. But if the Mercian wergelds were of ancient tradition, independently of the Wessex evidence, the statement of the Wessex wergelds in the Dooms of Ine need not be doubted. At the same time, the amount of the Wessex wergeld is confirmed by the wergeld of the secular thane in the Northumbrian statement, for 2000 thrymsas are equal to 6000 pence, and thus the wergeld of the thane accords with the Wessex twelve-hyndeman’s wergeld. And as this statement seems to have been rescued from times anterior to the Northmen’s invasion, it is so far independent evidence. In the same document the ceorl’s wergeld of 200 Mercian scillings is also mentioned.

The concurrence of independent traditions thus seems to trace back the difference between the Wessex and Mercian wergelds as well as the difference between the twelve-hynde and twy-hynde classes in both cases into the early Anglo-Saxon period. And if we may date them back to the time of King Ine--two centuries before the invasion of the Northmen--they may well go back earlier still. For wergelds which have already become traditional in the seventh century may not improbably have been brought by the invading tribes with them into Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries. The fact that the Mercian and Wessex wergelds differed makes it unlikely that the traditional wergelds were first adopted in Britain or acquired from the Romano-British population. That they differed exactly in the same ratio as the two classes of Continental wergelds differed is a fact which points still more strongly to a Continental origin.

[Sidenote: At 1:10 Wessex wergeld of 6000 pence = 200 gold solidi, and the Mercian of 4800 pence = 160 gold solidi.]

Moreover, the Wessex and Northumbrian wergeld of 1200 scillings of five pence--_i.e._ 6000 pence or sceatts at a ratio of 1:10--was equal to 600 tremisses or 200 gold solidi.

The Mercian wergeld of 1200 scillings of four pence--_i.e._ 4800 pence or sceatts--at the same ratio was equal to 480 tremisses or 160 gold solidi.

That the ratio of 1:10 was not an unlikely one is shown by its being the ratio under the Lex Salica between the forty scripula of silver and the gold solidus before the Merovingian reduction of the standard weight of the latter and the issue of silver tremisses.[277] It was also the ratio at which twelve Roman argentei or drachmæ of silver were apparently reckoned as equal to the Merovingian gold solidus.

The correspondence at this ratio of the Wessex twelve-hynde wergeld with the Frankish wergeld of 200 gold solidi, and of the Mercian twelve-hynde wergeld with the other Continental wergelds of 160 gold solidi, is sufficiently striking to be taken into account in any speculation as to the respective origins of the West Saxon and Mercian invading tribes. But that is not the object of this essay. It is enough to have noted a fact which may or may not turn out to be of some historical significance.

The value of the wergelds to this inquiry consists in the light they throw upon the solidarity of tribal society and the position in social rank of the various classes of Anglo-Saxon society. But we have yet to examine the laws of the Kentish kings, and it will be best to suspend any further judgment on these points until this remaining part of our task has been done.