CHAPTER XV.

_GENERAL CONCLUSIONS._

[Sidenote: Bearing of the results upon the division of classes and the character of holdings.]

Before concluding this Essay it may be well in a final chapter to consider its results in their bearing upon the conditions of early Anglo-Saxon society, and especially with regard to the division of classes and the character of the holdings.

The object has been to approach these difficult questions from the point of view of tribal custom.

[Sidenote: The amount of wergelds the main clue.]

The main clue to an understanding of the division of classes has been the amount of the wergelds.

[Sidenote: The general correspondence in wergelds throughout Western Europe.]

The trouble taken to arrive at a correct knowledge of the currencies in which the wergelds were paid, tedious as it may have seemed to the reader, will not have been thrown away if it has led to the recognition of the fact that there was a very general correspondence in the amount of the wergelds tenaciously adhered to by the tribes of Western Europe, whether remaining in their old homes or settled in newly conquered countries. The amount of the wergelds was not seemingly a matter of race. Cymric and German customs were singularly similar.

If the Irish eric fine formed an exception, Irish tribal custom nevertheless had many things in common with Cymric and German custom in other respects.

[Sidenote: The solidarity of the kindred connected with family holdings.]

It was from a study of the wergelds and the rights and liability of relatives in their receipt and payment that some idea was gained of the solidarity of the kindred under tribal custom. And this solidarity of the kindred was found to be closely connected with the family character of tribal land-holdings, of which the Cymric gwely was a typical example. Where direct evidence of this family element was wanting the liability of the kindred for the wergeld remained as an indication that it once had existed.

[Sidenote: The normal wergeld of 200 gold solidi or 100 head of cattle.]

In reviewing the evidence of these matters and attempting to bring the results to a focus, we begin with the fact that with comparatively few exceptions the normal wergeld of the full or typical freeman was everywhere so large--200 gold solidi, the heavy mina of gold, traditionally representing 100 head of cattle. This wergeld was too large by far for the individual slayer to pay, and possible only as a payment from one group of kindred to another.

[Sidenote: The Anglo-Saxon wergelds brought with them into Britain.]

We have seen reason to infer from the Kentish, Wessex, and Mercian wergelds that the Anglo-Saxon tribes shared in these traditions, and, so to speak, brought their wergelds with them into Britain. And we have found that Anglo-Saxon custom as regards the wergelds was substantially similar to that of the Continental tribes.

[Sidenote: No feud or wergeld within the kindred.]

From Beowulf we learned that, as there could be no feud within the kindred, a homicide within the kindred could not be avenged or compounded for. There was no galanas or wergeld in such a case under either Cymric or German custom, and evidence was found in the so-called Laws of Henry I. that it had been so also under Anglo-Saxon custom. Up to the time of the Norman Conquest the punishment of parricide was practically left by the laws to the spiritual jurisdiction of the Church (_supra_, p. 335).

[Sidenote: Wergelds paid and received by paternal and maternal relations.]

The principle which required both paternal and maternal relations to join in the payment and receipt of wergelds, and nearly always in the proportion of two thirds and one third, was also common to Cymric and German tribes. This principle depended upon a view of marriage likewise common to both. A blood relationship was established as regards children of a marriage, while husband and wife for many purposes remained in their own kindreds. There being no blood relationship between husband and wife, the husband’s kindred alone were liable for his crimes and the wife’s alone for her crimes, and neither the husband nor the wife received any portion of the other’s wergeld or was liable for his or her homicides. Such was the custom under the Cymric codes and the laws of the Bretts and Scots, and Anglo-Saxon custom as described in the so-called Laws of Henry I. was similar.

[Sidenote: The half wergeld of strangers in blood.]

The tribal feeling which allowed tribesmen and strangers to live side by side under their own laws, and made the Salic and Ripuarian Franks award a full wergeld to tribesmen of allied German tribes, while it gave only a half wergeld to the Gallo-Roman possessor who was not of their blood, was, it would seem, brought with the invading tribes into Britain.

Danish and English tribesmen were allowed to live side by side under their own laws and acknowledged as ‘equally dear,’ with a similar wergeld, while, at all events in the cases which come under notice, complete strangers in blood were awarded only a half wergeld as in the Continental laws.

We have not attempted to settle the question how far there was a Romano-British population left in the towns, but we have found incidental traces and hints that in Northumbria, Wessex, and Mercia there were ‘wilisc’ men--Welsh or British--who had only a half wergeld, being treated as strangers both in this respect and also as regards the substitution of the ordeal for the oaths of kindred (p. 403).

[Sidenote: The ordeal the alternative to the oaths of kinsmen.]

The principle that a man who could not bring to his protection the oath of his kinsmen must be brought to the ordeal was one of widely extended tribal custom. And it was emphasised by the adoption of the ordeal as a Christian ceremony solemnly performed in the churches under both Frankish and Anglo-Saxon law.

[Sidenote: The man of no kindred becomes a dependent on some one else’s land.]

There can be little doubt that in the solidarity of the kindred under tribal custom we have to do with the strongest instinct which everywhere moulded tribal society. So far as it had its way and was not confronted by more potent forces it must have almost necessarily ruled such matters as the division of classes, the occupation of land, and the modes of settlement.

When we inquire into the grades of society under tribal custom they seem everywhere to have their roots in the principles of blood relationship. A man who has no kindred to protect him needs and seeks the protection of a chieftain or lord. By the force of tribal gravitation he sinks into the dependent condition of living upon another’s land.

Whether he be a freedman who has risen from the rank of the theow or thrall, or a free tribesman of low position, or one of a conquered race, or a stranger immigrant, and whether he be cottier or the holder of the typical yardland, until in the course of generations a kindred has grown up around him, he remains in the dependent condition. He is indeed a freeman as compared with the theow or thrall, but when Alfred and Guthrum make their compact and agree that Dane and English shall be reckoned as equally dear at the normal wergeld of the full freeman it is not of the dependent class they are thinking. They give to this class and to the Danish leysing or newly made freedman a twy-hynde instead of a twelve-hynde wergeld.

[Sidenote: The twy-hynde class was the dependent class of gafolgeldas, with a lower wergeld.]

It might at first sight be supposed that this twy-hynde condition of the dependent class in England, so far as it may have included Anglo-Saxons, must have been the result of degradation in social status between the first settlements and the time of King Alfred, but we have sought in vain for evidence of an earlier higher position in the Laws of King Ine. And, on the whole, even when regarded solely from a tribal point of view, it does not seem unlikely that strangers in blood and freedmen and dependent followers of the conquering chieftains should find themselves after conquest and settlement in the economic condition of tenants and gafolgeldas on the lands of protecting lords. Nor would it be strange that, when in a new country and under other influences this uniform dependent economic condition had once become a general fact, the whole class, in spite of variety of origins, should find itself marked by a twy-hynde wergeld.

[Sidenote: The twy-hynde class were equated.]

It does not follow, however, that because in the compact between Alfred and Guthrum the twy-hynde class were reckoned as equally dear with the Norse leysing that the Anglo-Saxon ‘ceorl who sits on gafol-land’ was generally in as low a social position as the Norse newly made freedman. It is enough that according to the evidence, he was a dependent tenant, let us say, under the lordship of a twelve-hynde man or if settled upon royal demesne of some gesith or official of the king.

[Sidenote: With the Norse leysing.]

Still it may be well to look once again at the position of the Norse leysing, because, after all, it is with the leysing that the Anglo-Saxon twy-hynde gafolgelda was equated in a compact made after King Alfred’s victory, and so when the two chieftains seemed to be treating on equal terms. Surely King Alfred was not intending to degrade the Anglo-Saxon dependent class. Presumably he was making a good bargain for them.

[Sidenote: The low condition of the leysing.]

The early Norse laws were settled long after the date of this compact, upon the conversion of South Norway, and, as in other cases, they were framed with the express purpose of making room in the legal system for the Christian Church and so in some sense with its sanction. And yet so deep was the gulf between classes even then that a certain portion of the churchyard was set apart for leysings, and in no case were they to be buried in the portion reserved for classes above them. And if after giving his freedom-ale and so attaining the first step in freedom and independence the leysing should die leaving destitute children whose support ought not to be thrown back upon his lord, we have seen that the way out of the difficulty was to dig a grave in the churchyard into which the leysing’s children were to be placed and left to starve to death, the last survivor being the only one which the lord thenceforth had to maintain.[320] This was the position of the leysing at the bottom of the ladder of freedom.

[Sidenote: But he rose by steps as a kindred grew around him.]

But we found the leysing of the Norse laws rising by steps into greater freedom and better social position. And the process throughout was founded upon the gradual growth of kindred. It was the lack of kindred to swear for them and defend them which placed them low in the social scale, and it was the gradual growth of kindred generation after generation which marked the steps of their rise into better social position with higher wergelds.

[Sidenote: In England it was so once, but the rungs of the ladder drop out.]

When we turn to the Anglo-Saxon laws we seem to detect similar tribal principles originally at work but with differences which may very probably be referred to the circumstances attendant upon conquest and settlement in Britain.

The law of tribal gravitation here as elsewhere, aided, no doubt, by other potent forces, had been at work placing the man with an imperfect kindred in a dependent position at the bottom of the social ladder.

And it is important to note that at first the middle rungs of the ladder by which a man could climb out of the dependent position seem to have been present here as in Norway. The evidence is scanty, but sufficiently important.

From the Kentish laws the presence of stepping-stones into greater freedom may be inferred in the case of the three classes of _læts_ with their rising wergelds. And in a precious fragment of ancient custom happily rescued from oblivion we found evidence that, originally at all events, there had been a way out of the ceorl’s twy-hynde condition at the fourth generation of landholding connected with payment of gafol to the king’s utware and direct service to the king. But we recognised that the collector of the fragment looked longingly back to ancient custom, speaking of it in the past tense, as if it was no longer in force.[321]

It would obviously not be wise to trust solely to the negative evidence of the silence of the laws, but in this case the silence seems to confirm the evidence of the fragment. For the pathetic tone of the fragment finds an echo in the fact that all traces of the middle rungs in the ladder seem to have vanished from the later laws. There is no mention in Ine’s laws or in Alfred’s of there being or having been several grades of freedmen or læts. Even the half wergeld of the six-hynde stranger who has risen to the possession of five hides silently disappears after King Alfred’s time. From whatever cause, so far as the evidence goes, the twy-hynde class seems to have become a homogeneous class in which, in spite of different origins, distinctions were merged in a common economic condition. Differences of origin were perhaps forgotten as the result of comradeship in the long struggle against the Danish foe.

[Sidenote: And this kept open the gulf between twy-hynde and twelve-hynde classes.]

We thus seem to be driven to recognise the width and to some extent the bridgelessness, already in King Alfred’s time if not in King Ine’s, of the gulf between the position of the twelve-hynde landed class and that of the twy-hynde dependent class of gafolgeldas and geburs who were tenants on their land.

It seems probable that, though technically and really free in the sense of not being thralls, the twy-hynde class, broadly speaking, may have found themselves very early, if not from the first, placed in an economic condition of service and servitude, including work as well as gafol, which by the ultimate disappearance of the middle rungs of the ladder might very easily slide into what is loosely called the ‘serfdom’ of later times.

In the meantime we realise that the abjectness of this semi-servile condition may be very easily exaggerated by modern associations with the terms ‘service’ and ‘serfdom.’

It is when we turn from the twy-hynde class to the position of the class above them, of gesithcund and twelve-hynde men, that we learn that a part at least of the risk of misunderstanding may lie in the difference between the tribal notion of service and freedom and the more modern one.

[Sidenote: Position and services of the twelve-hynde class.]

What, then, has tribal custom to teach us as to the position and services of the twelve-hynde class?

[Sidenote: On a level with the Norse odalman.]

Reverting once more to the compact between Alfred and Guthrum, Dane and English are to be equally dear at eight half-marks of gold. The Englishman, without any limiting adjective, is the twelve-hynde man. And he is put on a level with the Danish typical free landholder, the hauld or odalman of the Norse laws, whose wergeld under Norse law was that of the typical freeman everywhere--equivalent to the normal wergeld of 200 gold solidi, the mina of gold, the traditional wergeld of 100 head of cattle. It was six times that of the Norse leysing, just as the twelve-hyndeman’s wergeld in England was six times that of the ‘ceorl who sits on gafol land.’

The English twelve-hynde man is therefore put on a level with the Norse odaller or typical landholder. And so, as we have seen, the ceorl who rose by the middle rungs of the ladder into the twelve-hynde position had _inter alia_ to become a landholder of 5 hides, and his family became gesithcund only after the landholding had continued to the fourth generation. His great-grandchildren then became gesithcund with a twelve-hynde wergeld.

[Sidenote: Twelve-hynde men were landholders.]

The twelve-hyndemen were therefore landholders, surrounded, in principle at least if not always in practice, by a kindred. But what kind of a landholding was it?

[Sidenote: Position of the first settlers.]

Approaching the question strictly from a tribal point of view, the solidarity of the kindred involved in the payment and receipt of wergelds would certainly suggest that those who had a right to receive and the obligation to pay held a position in their kindred quite different from that of the modern individual owner of land.

The analogy of Welsh and Irish and Salic and Norse and Scanian tribal custom would lead us to infer that the Anglo-Saxon settlers in England must have brought with them traditions of tribal or family ownership more or less of the type of the Cymric gwely, though doubtless modified by emigration and settlement in a new country.

[Sidenote: Separation from their kindreds threw them on the protection of the king.]

After all that has been said, traditions and perhaps actual examples of the individual ownership of the ‘Romanus possessor,’ and, still more likely, actual experience of the Roman type of landed estates, may have survived in Britain from the period of the Roman occupation, and the Anglo-Saxon settlers may easily have been influenced in the matter of landholding by what as conquerors they came to supplant. But they can hardly have wholly cast off their own tribal traditions and instincts. The continued payment and receipt of wergelds show that they did not. Even, to take an extreme case, if they came to Britain as single settlers having left their kinsmen behind them, still kindreds would gradually grow up around their descendants in the new country. And tribal custom left to itself would give to them landed rights, quite different from those of the individual owner. But the interval, apart from other outside influences, may well have subjected tribal custom to a strain.

From the point of view of this interval it may not be unreasonable to revert to the clauses of King Alfred’s laws on ‘kinless men’ and the Norman precedent, that the king was to take the place of the missing maternal kindred and of advocate for a Norman if he had no other.[322]

Unless, therefore, the twelve-hynde settler was surrounded by a full kindred in the new country, he must, according to his own tribal custom, have found himself much more of an individual than he was used to be, and therefore more dependent upon the protection of his chieftain or king.

We must not, on the one hand, conceive of the twelve-hynde settler as having all at once adopted the independent position of the Roman ‘possessor,’ though circumstances may have sometimes severed him as completely from his ‘parentilla’ as the ceremony of the Salic law. Nor can we, on the other hand, conceive of him always as a tribesman surrounded by his kindred. He may evidently, on the one hand, be released from many of the trammels involved in membership of a kindred, but, on the other hand, he is thrown more than ever under conditions of service to the king.

[Sidenote: Service under tribal custom not degrading. But the ties of kindred involved restraint on individual action.]

Let us for a moment revert to the tribal conception of these trammels and services. They did not always involve degradation of social condition. They often, as we have seen, were the mark of the attainment of a higher position.

[Sidenote: The Norse odalman a sharer in the odal, with duties to his kindred.]

The kindred of the aillts or strangers who settled upon a chieftain’s land under Cymric custom was acknowledged in the fourth generation of continued occupation, but at the moment a kindred was acknowledged its members became _adscripti glebæ_. When the Irish fuidhir did the same his descendants of the fourth generation found themselves not only bound to the land, but also bound together by something like the rules of the Cymric gwely, so that one of them could not sell or charge his share without the consent of the others. We found the same thing in Norway, where the rules for payment of the wergelds by relations were more elaborate than anywhere else, and where the growth of kindred seems so completely to have ruled the rise from one social grade to another, till at last a man whose great-grandfather’s great-grandfather was a freeborn landholder became an odaller. If at first sight we were to picture the odalman to ourselves as an individual freeholder of Roman or modern type we should soon find out our mistake when we learned that if he wanted to sell his odal he must first _consult his odal-sharers_. When examined closely the fact became evident that it was the _group of kindred_ that by long settlement on the land had become odal, and that the shares of individuals in the odal were subject--with, of course, many differences--to some such tribal customs as those of the Cymric gwely. The odalman was thus not a single isolated landowner. He was surrounded by kindred odal like himself, reciprocally bound to fight for one another and swear for one another, and to share in the payment or receipt of one another’s wergeld. The odalman was protected by his kindred, but his freedom of individual action was restricted by it.

[Sidenote: The Salic alod a family holding.]

So also under Salic law the joint inheritors of the alod on _terra Salica_, with right of redivision between great-grandchildren _per capita_, were in the same way trammelled, and when by a solemn public form they released themselves from their obligations to their kindred they relinquished also all rights of inheritance and protection (p. 134).

Are we to consider these Continental analogies to be without relevance to Anglo-Saxon landholding?

Dr. Konrad von Maurer, in those masterly papers contributed in 1855 to the ‘Kritische Ueberschau’ which are still so valuable, rightly lays stress upon the power of the _kindred_ as the great rival of the power of the _state_ in the development of Anglo-Saxon polity. We find but little direct allusion to the kindred in the laws, it is true. But incidentally and as it were by accident we have learned from passages mentioned in their proper place that so late as the time of Athelstan there were kindreds both twelve-hynde and twy-hynde powerful enough to defy the King’s peace.[323]

This is in itself a significant reminder that more or less of tribal custom remained in force behind the screen of the laws from which most of our evidence has been taken. And yet we seem to be almost forced to the conclusion that if we try to realise the position of the twelve-hynde settler we must regard him, at all events for the first few generations, as in a very different position from that of the Norse odalman in the old country. Even though as head of his family he may have brought descendants and dependents with him, he could not in the new country be at once surrounded by kinsmen and odal-sharers who with himself had hereditary rights in the land.

[Sidenote: Anglo-Saxon twelve-hynde settler pays gafol and service direct to the king.]

We thus come round again to the point that so far as he may have been separated from his kindred the first Anglo-Saxon settler must have found himself thrown upon the protection of his chief and into a position of individual service. He becomes, as we have seen according to the scanty evidence of the Laws of Ine, a king’s gesith, with military and judicial and administrative duties to discharge, put into a post of service which he cannot relinquish at pleasure. Service to the king has to some extent taken the place of the restraints of kindred, and so in a sense, like the twy-hynde man, he has become a gafolgelda, but paying his gafol and services direct to the king, and _adscriptus glebæ_, but tied to an estate and an official position instead of to a yardland.

This view of the position of the gesithcund and twelve-hynde class rests very much upon the incidental evidence of the Dooms of Ine, but the truth of it is confirmed by the independent evidence of the precious fragment already referred to. For its interesting evidence shows that, in addition to his holding of five hides of land, it was precisely into this position of gafol-paying and service _direct to the king_ that the ceorl of ancient custom had to climb in order to earn the gesithcund status and the twelve-hynde wergeld.

Thus we arrive at a definite and practical mark distinguishing ultimately, and perhaps more or less from the first, the twelve-hynde and twy-hynde classes.

The twelve-hynde or landed class paid gafol and did service direct to the king. The twy-hynde or dependent class paid gafol and did service to the landed class, who from this point of view were middlemen between the twy-hynde gafolgelda and the king.

[Sidenote: The holding direct from the king easily becomes a manor.]

We seem, therefore, thus early to arrive at something analogous to Professor Maitland’s technical definition of the Manor as the fiscal unit from which gafol is paid direct to the king, while its lord is the receiver of the payments and services of its tenants. The single landholder who is not under a manorial lord in the Domesday survey is said to hold ‘as for a manor’--though he may have no tenants.

[Sidenote: Tribal character of the manor as a judicial unit.]

It may be worth while in this connection to allude to another general feature of the manorial estate on both sides of the Channel which if not directly of tribal origin must at least have worked in close sympathy with tribal custom.

The gesithcund man officially charged with the control of a district or estate easily became in a manorial sense lord of the dependent tenants upon it. And the judicial and magisterial adjunct to the lordship became a prevalent feature of the typical manor.

We have seen that the ‘sac and soc’ of later times may have grown from the root of the tribal principle involved in the sacredness of the precinct or area of protection of the chieftain and, in degree, of every grade of tribesman who possessed a homestead. How large a place this principle occupied is shown by the prominence of the _fredus_ in Frankish law and of the _mundbyrd_ in the early Anglo-Saxon laws. The manor was a complex product of many factors, and tribal custom was certainly one of them.

[Sidenote: Was it a family holding?]

Once again, what kind of a holding was that of the twelve-hyndeman? Was it a family holding, and what were the rules of succession?

[Sidenote: Place names in favour of its being sometimes a family holding.]

Unfortunately, we do not know how far the immigrants came in kindreds and families or as followers and ‘gesiths’ of military chieftains. But, in any case, if we may take the evidence of place-names the great number of patronymic names of places would lead to the supposition that the holdings were family holdings. The _ham_ may at first have been the estate of a gesithcund man held direct of the king with gafolgeldas and geburs under him holding yardlands and doing work on his demesne. But when it becomes an _ingham_ the patronymic termination points to the lordship of the manor having been held, as time went on, jointly, in somewhat the same way as the Cymric chieftainship in the gwely. His sons and grandsons and great-grandsons may really have had their rights of maintenance all along, and ultimately, if they were allowed to do so, they may have sometimes divided the inheritance instead of continuing to hold it jointly. Tribal instincts working alone would probably follow some such line as this.

But it is easy to see that the nearer the holding of the twelve-hyndeman approached to a benefice or office the stronger would be the tendency towards single succession instead of divisions among heirs.

During the century or two after the first settlement there was time, no doubt, for the growth of kindreds, and the thane in the king’s service would soon become the head of a family group; but, on the other hand, many influences were at work undermining the solidarity of the kindred and strengthening the manorial element. Tribal instincts die hard. But probably there never was full opportunity for the growth upon English soil of anything like the solidarity in landholding of the Norse kindreds of odal sharers tracing back their family possession for four or five generations.

[Sidenote: Folk-land may have devolved under tribal custom.]

There is but little evidence on the rights or rules of succession to be found in the laws. And the silence is suggestive of the continuance of custom. Even the diplomatic evidence of wills and charters is so much restricted to boc-land that it perhaps throws a shadow rather than direct light upon the ordinary devolution of land which had not become the subject of the Romanised rules of ownership, conveyance and testamentary disposition.

But if Professor Vinogradoff is right in his view that folk-land was that land which was still held under ancient custom, then for anything we know, in spite of documentary silence, folk-land may still have been held more or less as family rather than individual property even in later times.

If the suggested analogy between the _terra Salica_ of the Salic laws and the _folk-land_ of Anglo-Saxon documents could be proved, the family character of the holdings in both cases would receive confirmation. At the same time the frequent concurrence of relatives in Anglo-Saxon dispositions of land and the common form of deprecation of future interference on their part would at least be consistent with the supposition.

[Sidenote: But feudal principles would tend towards single succession outwardly.]

That as time went on the growing force of feudal principles would demand single succession to landed estates whenever they could be regarded as benefices is what might be expected. And it is worth noting that under later feudal custom, by a kind of compromise, what was really a family holding was often artificially moulded for practical purposes into a single holding with apparent single succession.

[Sidenote: A single holding may cover internal family divisions.]

In the Domesday survey are many instances in which thanes or soldiers here and there hold manors or fractions of manors ‘pariter’ or ‘in paragio.’ And when the feudal tenancy ‘in parage’ is examined in its fully developed form on the Continent, it is found to present many resemblances to what under Cymric custom the family holding of a tribal chief of kindred might be if the chief alone were regarded as the landed person doing homage to the superior lord for all his kindred and if, in the next stage, when the gwely was internally divided between brothers, one of them only did homage for the rest. There were indeed in tribal custom as to the chieftainship and the constitution of the gwely traits which easily allowed themselves to be developed on feudal lines. For the present purpose, however, the point seems to be that within what looks from the outside like a single individual landholding there may have been internal family divisions which are not apparent.

Passing now from what may be regarded as the holdings of the twelve-hynde class, more or less tending to resemble manorial estates, to the yardlands of the twy-hynde class, room may perhaps be found even in their case for the exceptional continuance of the family element in spite of the apparent single succession.

[Sidenote: Kentish family holdings.]

The Kentish holdings in sulungs and yokes instead of in hides and yardlands seem to go back to the earliest Kentish records. The fact that, in spite of the difference in date between the evidence of the earliest charters and that of the Domesday survey and the surveys in the Battle Abbey records and the ‘Black Book of St. Augustine,’ the holdings seem to have been throughout in sulungs and yokes points to continuity. And when these sulungs and yokes in the surveys are found to be very often held by ‘the _heredes_ of so and so,’ or ‘so and so and his _pares_,’ it seems fair to suggest that in these Kentish holdings there may have been a survival of family ownership.

Whether it were so or not, this later Kentish evidence shows at least that the continuance of family holdings was not necessarily inconsistent with external uniformity in the sulungs and yokes of the open-field system in Kent. And if so, why may not the same thing be true in exceptional cases of the hides and yardlands of Wessex and Mercia?

Contrary principles have a strange way in practice of finding a _modus vivendi_ till one of them at last overrides the other.

[Sidenote: Gavelkind holdings were family holdings.]

It will be remembered that one of the complaints of the existence of kindreds powerful enough to defy the king’s peace in King Athelstan’s time came from Kent. And if these facts may be taken as evidence that the solidarity of kindreds had been better preserved in Kent than elsewhere some tribal light might perhaps be thrown upon the survival of the custom of gavelkind in Kent.

It is not a matter upon which we must dwell, but evidently the gavelkind tenure must have been something different from the prevalent tenures of other districts. The difference cannot have been the equal division of the sulungs and yokes between sons as contrasted with the single succession to the yardlands of other districts, because the sulungs and yokes were apparently not interfered with by the gavelkind division among heirs. And when the right of the youngest son under the custom of gavelkind to succeed to the parental hearth is compared with the similar right of the youngest son in the case of the Cymric gwely the inference becomes very strong that the gavelkind holdings were family holdings and the gavelkind divisions internal divisions within the family, like those of the Cymric gwely, not necessarily interfering with the permanence of the sulungs and yokes of the open-field system of which the family holdings were composed or in which the family had rights.

The surveys of Kentish manors in the records of Battle Abbey and the ‘Black Book of St. Augustine’ present instances sometimes of sulungs and yokes held by the _heredes_ of a deceased person and sometimes of others which maintain their unity for purposes of payments and services although in the possession of several holders. The sulung in these cases seems to have continued to be the unit liable for the fixed ploughing and other services irrespective of the question who were its occupants.[324]

Once more perhaps some light may be gained from Cymric tribal custom.

[Sidenote: Analogy of the Cymric trefgordd.]

We have learned from the Cymric evidence that a district might be divided for purposes of revenue and food rents into sub-districts, irrespective of who might be the occupants. And we have seen also how the Cymric trefgordd or unit of pastoral occupation, with its one plough and one churn and one herd of cattle under a single herdsman, could remain a permanent taxable unit paying the tunc pound in lieu of food rents, whoever might at the time be its occupants and have cattle in the herd. Within the lines of tribal custom itself the members of a Cymric gwely might be spread over a district and their cattle distributed among many trefgordds, while from the chieftain’s point of view the local units of taxation were uniform and regular.

[Sidenote: But the yardlands were mostly holdings with single succession on payment of a relief to the lord.]

But this must not blind our eyes to the fact that the yardlands on Anglo-Saxon estates were, so far as we can see, for the most part really individual holdings with actual single succession. However hard tribal custom may have fought for the family element, the manorial element in the end seems to have prevailed on most manors so as to secure, for the purposes of the lordship and the convenience of manorial management, single succession to the yardlands. The fact that as early as King Ine’s time we see new individual holdings of geburs being made by the allotment of yardlands and homesteads to individual tenants in return for gafol and work, when taken in connection with the ‘Rectitudines’ brings us back to the likeness of these holdings to the holdings of the _villani_ of later times. We see in the allotment of stock to the gebur, of which we trace scattered evidence, the fact on which the principle of the later villenage was based. Only when both homestead and yardland came from the lord was there to be work as well as gafol under King Ine’s laws. The stock of the holding according to the ‘Rectitudines’ belonged in theory to the lord and upon the tenant’s death returned to the lord. The continuance to another tenant on the payment of a relief involved the admission that the holding and its outfit were a loan from the lord.

[Sidenote: The manorial element must not be lost sight of.]

The fact that in exceptional cases family holdings were able to maintain their own under manorial management must not be allowed to lead us to underrate the power of the manorial element. There were in tribal custom itself as described by Tacitus elements of what we have elsewhere spoken of as the embryo manor, but this must not blind our eyes to the fact that something more was required to produce the general uniformity of holdings and single succession upon manorial estates than tribal custom working alone.

If from a tribal point of view we try to understand the growth of manorial serfdom and see how on the Continent it was seemingly the result of the combination of two leading factors, tribal custom and Roman methods of land management, it becomes hardly possible to ignore the presence of something like the same combination of two interacting factors on British or English ground.

With the manorial side of serfdom in its connection with the widely prevalent open field system we have already attempted to deal in a former volume. That there may have been some continuity and continuance of estates managed on the Roman system can hardly be denied. However far the policy of extermination of the old inhabitants was carried, it never extended over the whole area. And the whole of Britain was not conquered in the same century. Even if the continuity of estates in Britain should be considered to have been entirely broken by the Anglo-Saxon invasions (which is hardly conceivable), it must be admitted that continuity and likeness between England and the Continent as to land management was very soon restored on monastic and other ecclesiastical estates, and perhaps also upon what was Royal domain. Nor can it be doubted that herein was a force greatly strengthening the manorial element.

[Sidenote: Tribal custom only would not meet the whole case.]

If we limit our view to the tribal side only of the problem, we recognise that in Scandinavia and in the Cymric districts of our own island and in Ireland tribal principles working alone tended powerfully, without help from the Roman side, to produce a class of tenants becoming _adscripti glebæ_ after four generations of occupation, but it did not produce either in Norway or in Wales or Ireland or in Celtic Scotland that general and typical form of occupation in uniform yardlands or ‘huben’ so prevalent in England and Germany on manorial estates with ostensibly single succession and services in so many points resembling those of the Roman colonate.

Whether the manor was the indirect or direct successor of the Roman Villa--_i.e._ whether the continuity was broken or not--the _manorial_ use of the open-field system of agriculture seems to be required to produce the uniformity of holdings in yardlands and the single succession which marked what is roughly called the serfdom of the manorial estate.

[Sidenote: The open-field system not of manorial origin.]

It is hardly necessary to repeat that the open-field system itself was not of manorial origin. It was essentially an economic result and differed very greatly in its forms. Its main object seems to have been fairness and equality of occupation. Under tribal custom, in Wales, it arose out of coaration of portions of the waste or pasture by the common plough-team to which the tribesmen or the taeogs, as the case might be, contributed oxen. The strips were day-works of the plough taken in rotation by the contributors according to the place of their oxen in the plough-team for the season, and they returned into common pasture when the crop had been removed. The tribesman in the pastoral stage was the owner of oxen but not of the strips ploughed by them. They were merged again in the common pasture of the district in which he had rights of grazing for his cattle. And the cattle, and not the corn crops, were the main thing upon which the system turned.

Whatever method of distribution may have been followed, as arable farming increased and the strips became more and more permanently arable, mostly on the two-field or the three-field system, the area of unploughed land was more and more restricted and the pasture over the stubbles and fallows obviously became more and more essential. The cattle, on the one hand, required the pasture on the stubbles and fallows, and the land, before being ploughed again, required the manure arising from the pasturing of the flocks and herds upon it.

Where open-field husbandry still subsists in Western Europe, whether on this or the other side of the Channel, the owner of the strips has still no right of grazing upon his own strips till upon the appointed day when the common right begins of all the holders to graze their cattle in a common herd or flock over the whole area. This right is known in France as the ‘vaine pâture,’ and it is still the most important and indestructible element in the open-field husbandry. In the great open fields around Chartres a man may plant his strips with vines if he likes, but to this day, if he does so, he must let the sheep of the commune graze over them after a certain date, in exercise of the immemorial right of the _vaine pâture_.

[Sidenote: But uniform holdings and single succession are marks of manorial lordship.]

In all this no manorial element need be present, and when the manorial element is absent there is not necessarily any uniformity or single succession in the holdings. But when manorial management comes upon the top of this widely extended and all but universal system of agriculture, whether in Roman times or later, the bundle of scattered strips which under tribal custom could be ploughed by a pair of oxen whether alone or in joint ploughing is very naturally taken as the typical holding. And thus when we find in the Laws of Ine and later records gafolgeldas and geburs settled upon yardlands and doing service by week-work on the lord’s demesne the natural inference must be that it is the result of manorial land management and that there has come into existence already something like a manor with something like a community in serfdom upon it, using the prevalent open-field system as the shell in which it will henceforth live so far as its agriculture is concerned.

And so it seems natural to attribute to the manorial management and the manorial requirement of fixed services and dues the uniformity of the holdings and the single succession by which the uniformity was preserved. The power which seeks and makes uniformity seems to come from above. Agricultural communities of free tribesmen who had become individual freeholders (if such could be conceived of as prevalent in King Ine’s and King Alfred’s time) would probably have used the open-field system in a quite different way. And we see no trace of it in the evidence.

[Sidenote: Later evidence of free holdings may not be to the point.]

When, however, we have said this we have no disposition to ignore or make light of the later evidence upon which great stress has quite rightly been laid by Professor Maitland in his remarkable work on ‘The Domesday Survey and beyond,’ showing that there were in some districts villages, in which the manorial element was apparently absent in the time of Edward the Confessor, though appearing as manors after the Conquest. He has suggested that in these villages not only the manor in name but also the manor as a thing was apparently non-existent. There was in these cases apparently, in King Edward’s time, no demesne land upon which the services of a tenantry in villenage could be rendered, and the tenants were often sokemen who had individually put themselves under the protection of this lord or that, instead of there being one lordship over the group, as in a manor.

[Sidenote: The Danish wars left many estates vacant, which may have been reconstructed on feudal rather than manorial lines.]

These lordless villages on the eve of the Conquest as shown by the entries T. R. E. in the Domesday survey and especially in the ‘Inquisitio Eliensis,’ merit more careful study than has yet been given to them, and so far as they can be shown to prove the existence of free villages of _liberi homines_ or _socmanni_, after the Conquest merged sometimes in the class of _villani_, I am ready to welcome the evidence. But unless they can be traced back to earlier times, their occurrence mostly in the Danish districts interspersed with other villages which were manors and had demesne land, together with the singular fact that the holders in these villages were commended to several lords, suggests that their peculiar position may date from the time of the Danish invasions, and be the result of the devastations as to the effects of which the ‘Liber Eliensis’ contains so much evidence. Many a manor may have lost both lord and tenants, and have been filled up again by the great lords of the district with new tenants--soldiers and servants who had served in the wars, it may be. Thus these cases, in which many features of the ordinary manor were apparently missing in the time of Edward the Confessor, may be of recent date and so, while important when viewed in relation to the Domesday survey and the changes made by the Conquest, not specially instructive as regards earlier Anglo-Saxon conditions.

[Sidenote: The fact regarding the Danelaga still very little known.]

Unfortunately, as we have seen, the laws of the Danish period, while recording existing and modified Anglo-Saxon customs on various points, leave us in the dark as to Danish custom, whether of old standing in the Danelaga or newly imported in King Cnut’s time. It was, no doubt, known to the invaders, and it was enough for them to say ‘as the law stands,’ though we do not know what it was. The whole question of the Danelaga was purposely omitted from the scope of my former volume, and now, after twenty years, still remains a subject requiring careful examination by future inquirers.

But this cannot be done completely until the minute work which Professor Maitland and Mr. Round and Mr. Corbett are gradually doing upon the Domesday survey itself in its local details has been further pursued, and it lies, with so many other branches of a difficult subject, beyond the limits of the inquiry made in this volume.

[Sidenote: New feudal tenures may have had a tribal root. St. Oswald’s tenants for three successive lives.]

Reference may, however, be incidentally made to the numerous cases in which, in order to describe the nature of the tenure of socmanni and others under what were perhaps new conditions, the fact was recorded in varying phrases whether this person or that could or could not leave or sell his land. Of some it is stated ‘possunt recedere,’ of others ‘non possunt recedere’--of some ‘possunt vendere,’ of others ‘non possunt vendere.’ Though these tenures may have been comparatively modern and may belong to a period of advanced feudal conditions, still it may be possible that some trait of tribal custom may lurk at the root of the distinction. From the manorial point of view, it was necessary to record of the socmanni whether they had only limited rights in the land subject to the performance of services and ‘consuetudines’ (which, by the way, seem to have been very much like those of the villani) or whether they were permanent freeholders who could sell their holdings and leave the land when they liked.[325] The position of the tenants in this respect was probably dependent upon the tenure under which they held, _i.e._ upon whether they were tenants with only life interests, or for successive lives, or, as we should say, tenants in fee. After the devastations of war many new tenants must have been put upon desolated manors, and Professor Maitland has very rightly laid stress in another connection on the traditional habit of granting leases for three lives only, so that a holding might ultimately return to the lord. He has pointed out that when Bishop Oswald (A.D. 962-992), exercising manorial rights over the great domain of the Church of Worcester made these leases to thanes on certain services for three successive lives (_i.e._ for the lives of father, son, and grandson) he did it expressly for the purpose of securing to his successor full power to renew them or not.[326] And from a tribal point of view it may be a pertinent question whether the restriction to the three generations had not some indirect connection with the tribal custom or instinct, so often alluded to, which gave to the fourth generation of uninterrupted occupation fixity of tenure and status.

[Sidenote: Tribal custom known to Danes and Normans.]

Recurring to the scattered cases of thanes holding ‘in paragio’ and by no means confined to the Danish districts,[327] it was necessary to state in the Domesday records, as in the case of the socmanni, whether they had or had not power to leave or to sell, and it may be useful that we should be reminded by these cases, in which feudal custom had possibly arisen out of tribal custom, that tribal custom was not unknown to the Danish and Norman conquerors of England. The Danish immigrants came from a district in which tribal custom was still fresh and vigorous. The Normans too, as is shown by the so-called Laws of Henry I., found Anglo-Saxon custom by no means altogether alien to their own instincts.

Before concluding this essay perhaps a further observation should be made.

We have learned in the course of this inquiry that it does not do to take too insular a view of Anglo-Saxon conditions. The similarity of wergelds, and indeed of tribal custom generally, has throughout become very apparent. But perhaps it is hardly more striking than the similarity in the _modifications_ of tribal custom found in the laws on both sides of the Channel.

In their migrations and conquests the conquering tribes found themselves everywhere breathing a moral atmosphere in which it was difficult for the old tribal instincts to live. In such matters as the responsibility of a master for his slave’s homicides and of relatives for their kinsman’s crimes we have watched as it were modifications of tribal custom in the course of being made, here and there, on almost identical lines. May it not have been so also in regard to the important matter of the division of classes?

[Sidenote: Romanising and Christian influences apart from the manor.]

If we have recognised rightly the tribal principles originally at the root of the distinction between the twelve-hynde and twy-hynde classes there is no reason why we should not recognise also that besides the potent force of manorial management there may have been other influences at work widening the gulf between the two classes, and, so to speak, reducing to a level the members of each class by breaking away the rungs of the ladder between them.

It must not be overlooked that in the earliest Continental laws most nearly contemporary with those of Kent--Alamannic, Bavarian, Burgundian, and Wisigothic--the divisions of society have a very artificial look, as though largely based upon wealth rather than the tribal principles of kindred.

Now, German writers are not agreed upon the point whether these artificial divisions found in these earliest of the laws ought to be regarded as belonging to ancient German custom or whether they may not rather be traced to Roman influences.[328]

[Sidenote: The earliest laws most influenced by Roman traditions.]

We have already seen how necessary it is in connection with these early laws to discriminate between ancient custom and the new influences which were working in them in the direction of individualism and the disintegration of the kindred. The earliest laws are, as we have seen, just those in which tribal custom had fared the worst.

[Sidenote: Non-tribal division of classes.]

In the Alamannic Pactus of the sixth century (Fragment ii. 36) the grades for wergelds were as under:--

(1) ‘baro de minoflidis,’

(2) ‘medianus Alamannus,’

(3) ‘primus’ _or_ ‘meliorissimus Alamannus.’

And these were subdivisions of the _ingenuus_ class, for there were below them the _lidus_ and the _servus_. In another clause (iii. s. 25) a similar division is applied to animals. The penalties are given for killing ordinary, ‘mediana,’ and ‘meliorissima jumenta.’

In the Burgundian law the division of society into three grades--_optimates_, _mediocres_, and _inferiores_--is found in the _Lex Romana_ and is applied to Romans and Burgundians alike. These divisions seem to supplant those of kindred, and to have no tribal principle at their root.[329]

In the Wisigothic laws the disintegration of tribal society is so far advanced that the wergelds of the _ingenuus_ class are regulated, not by kindred or social position, but, as we have seen, according to the age of the individual.

It is difficult not to connect the substitution of artificial grades for those dependent on kindred with the Roman tendency to divide society into ‘patrician’ and ‘plebs,’ and the ‘plebs’ according to position and wealth into _honestiores_ and _humiliores_.

Already in Cæsar’s time we see how difficult it was from a Roman point of view to understand the relation under tribal custom of the dependent tribesmen to their chieftain. Cæsar does not seem to have recognised the link of blood-relationship between them. To his view the chieftains were _equites_ and the tribesmen almost their _servi_. It was difficult otherwise to bring the two classes within some recognised category of Roman law.

So it was no doubt, in degree, at the later period in the case of the conquering German tribes, when the Romanising forces were mainly in clerical hands.

The influence of the Church also told in favour of the artificial and anti-tribal division of the people into great men and small men. Its tenets of individual responsibility favoured individualism.

[Sidenote: The anti-tribal influences of the Church in Southern Europe.]

Canon XVI. of the Council of Orleans (A.D. 549) shows that the ecclesiastical mind in Gaul was familiar with the division into classes ‘majorum et mediocrium personarum.’

[Sidenote: Evidence of Merovingian formulæ as regards wergelds.]

A canon of an earlier Council (A.D. 511) shows how by taking refuge in a church a homicide received protection till composition was arranged, and how thus the question of wergelds was brought within clerical recognition. Once brought within its power the Church was not likely to let it slip from its grasp. And the collections of Formulæ of the Merovingian period show how the clergy joined with the other authorities in arranging the payment of wergelds and the prevention of private vengeance. From these formulæ it would seem that the payment and perhaps the amount of the wergeld had become to some extent a matter of mediation and arrangement through the intervention of ‘boni homines’ who were sometimes ‘sacerdotes.’[330] And when the award was given and the payment made, it was natural that a formal charter of acknowledgment in stay of vengeance on the part of the relations of the slain should be insisted upon. Each set of formulæ contains a form for this purpose. The matter of wergelds had become a subject of Franco-Roman conveyancing.

[Sidenote: Clerical influences in England in favour of individualism, evident in the modification of custom found in the Anglo-Saxon laws.]

Romanising and clerical influences thus working together in connection with wergelds would naturally tend to exclude from consideration the question of kindred, and to make the payment of the wergeld a matter for the homicide alone.

Long before the time of King Ine these Romanising influences must have been at work in England, as elsewhere, introducing new considerations of justice and the position of classes founded on Roman law and Christian feeling, and not upon tribal custom.

We have recognised some such action as this in the nearly contemporary Canons and in the Kentish laws, as well as in the later Anglo-Saxon laws, and indeed again and again throughout this inquiry, so that while we have had to notice again and again the extent to which the Church succumbed to tribal custom when it suited its purpose to do so, it must not be forgotten how much of the modification of custom found in the laws was due to the influence of the Romanised Church.

It is not, therefore, enough to recognise only Romanised forms of land management under clerical influence. We must recognise also something of the same persistent antagonism of the Church to tribal custom which on the Continent had already in the sixth and seventh centuries sometimes succeeded in extruding considerations of kindred from the matter of wergelds, and to a great extent also from the question of the division of classes.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Last words.]

With this further recognition of outside influences, this contribution towards the understanding of a difficult question must come to an end. All that can be claimed on its behalf is that a few further steps in advance may have been made good. It may seem to have resulted rather in the restatement of some of the problems than in their solution. But this is what might be expected from the attempt to approach a subject which has many sides especially with light from the tribal side only. Following the true method of working from the known to the unknown, it is not until such a problem has been approached separately from its different sides that a final solution can be reached; and this involves the fellow work of many historical students.

In the meantime, without ignoring or seeking to minimise the force of other important influences, it may, I think, safely be said that we have found the influence of tribal custom upon Anglo-Saxon polity and economic conditions as apparent, all things considered, as there could be reason to expect.

It was a factor in economic development which, among others and in due proportion, has to be reckoned with, and its study has the special value that it helps to bring the student of the Anglo-Saxon laws to regard them from the point of view of the Anglo-Saxon settlers themselves.

FOOTNOTES

[1] _Origin of Currency and Weight Standards_, Camb. U. Press, 1892.

[2] For convenience I adhere throughout to reckoning in _wheat-grains_. Professor Ridgeway informs me that three barleycorns were equated with four wheat-grains, and that a passage in Theophrastus shows that in the fourth century B.C. 12 barleycorns = obol and 12 obols = the stater. The Greek diobol = therefore 24 barleycorns, _i.e._ 32 wheat-grains, and the stater = 144 barleycorns, _i.e._ 192 wheat-grains. The reader will understand that as Romans, Celts, Anglo-Saxons, and Normans reckoned in wheat-grains, there will be great convenience in adhering throughout to wheat-grains in this inquiry. And further the theoretic building up of weights in wheat-grains was preserved traditionally more easily than the actual standards of weight.

[3] The range of the variation in the actual weight of the stater as a coin (without necessarily implying variation in the theoretic weight in wheat-grains) is given by metrologists as follows:

Grammes Babylonian 8·18 Crœsus 8·18 Darius 8·36 to 8·41 Attic 8·64 to 8·73 Philip of Macedon and Alexander the Great 8·73 The Greek cities on the Black Sea 9·06

[4] _Kinship &c. in Arabia_, p. 53.

[5] _Ordinances of Manu_, xi. pp. 128-131.

[6] Sections 8 and 11.

[7] Herod. v. c. 77 and vi. c. 79.

[8] The latest results of metrological research are most conveniently stated by Hultsch in his _Die Gewichte des Alterthums nach ihrem Zusammenhange dargestellt_, Leipzig, 1898. And Mr. F. G. Hill, of the British Museum, has recently issued an excellent hand-book of the Greek and Roman coins containing information on these points.

[9] The relation of the ancient Gallic gold currency to the subject of wergelds is interesting and important, but cannot be enlarged upon here.

[10] For the authorities for the following short statement see _infra_, Chap. VII. s. 1.

[11] Besides these silver _tremisses_ some silver _scripula_ were issued, but it is with the sceatts mainly that we have to do. In connection with the next section, however, the fact that the scripulum was current as a coin is worth notice.

[12] _Metrologicorum Scriptorum Reliquiae_ (Lipsiae, 1866).

[13] Hultsch, _Die Gewichte des Alterthums_, pp. 53 and 203.

[14] _Metr. Script._ ii. 131-139.

[15] Hultsch, _Metr. Script._ i. pp. 66 and 87.

[16] Athelstan, vi. 6, s. 2 and vi. 3; and see Schmid’s Glossary under _Geldrechnung_.

[17] There can hardly have been at Tours at this moment any other Liutgarda than the queen under Alcuin’s spiritual charge.

[18] For this incident see _Alcuini Epist._ xxv.

[19] _Metr. Script._ ii. 31, 99, 114, &c.

[20] For the references to the Codes and Extents, and authorities for the statements in this summary, the reader must be referred to the former volume. But for additional statements full references will be given. Where not otherwise stated, the figures refer to the two volumes of _Ancient Laws of Wales_.

[21] Prof. Rhys informs me that _da_ in Carnarvonshire local dialect still means ‘cattle,’ while in other parts of Wales it has the wider meaning of ‘goods.’

The allotment of cattle involved grazing rights, and often separate homesteads. Accordingly in the Denbigh Extent we find that so and so ‘habet domum’ or ‘non habet domum.’

This dependence for maintenance of the boy upon the higher chieftain is indirectly confirmed by the Extents, which mention among the chieftain’s rights the ‘fosterage of youths’ &c. See _Tribal System in Wales_, p. 169.

That the chieftain who gives the _da_ was the ‘chief of kindred’ and not a mere territorial lord is shown by the fact that when a stranger family have lived in the land till they have formed a kindred by intermarriage with Cymraes, all the members of the family become ‘man and kin’ to the chief of kindred of the new kindred. _Tribal System in Wales_, p. 132.

[22] i. pp. 167-169.

[23] p. 543.

[24] p. 549, s. 19.

[25] i. 96 and 545.

[26] If the sister was married to an alltud and her son killed a person, ⅔ of the galanas fell on the mother’s kindred (i. p. 209), but there was no liability beyond the gwely or second cousins (ii. p. 657).

[27] ‘The galanas of every female shall always be to the kindred,’ i. p. 241.

[28] ‘Three cases wherein a wife is to answer without her husband. The first is for homicide,’ i. p. 463. But for accessories to murder she and her husband pay her camlwrw and derwy, i. p. 105; and she can claim _spearpenny_, i. pp. 103, 705; ii. p. 65.

[29] i. pp. 231-3, 409, 517, 747; ii. p. 695. On separation husband and wife divided the cattle and most other things equally.

[30] ii. pp. 281-2, 740.

[31] i. p. 765; ii. p. 269.

[32] ii. p. 693.

[33] ii. p. 531.

[34] i. p. 415.

[35] i. pp. 259, 447.

[36] _Tribal System in Wales_, App. p. 59, &c.

[37] The principal tref as contrasted with summer bothy on the mountains.

[38] ii. p. 563.

[39] i. p. 795.

[40] Fol. 280.

[41] i. pp. 283, 499.

[42] i. pp. 111, 459, 745; ii. p. 257.

[43] i. pp. 201, 535.

[44] ii. p. 493.

[45] i. p. 141.

[46] i. p. 229.

[47] For the following statements see _Venedotian Code_, i. p. 223, &c.; and _Dimetian Code_, i. p. 407, &c.

[48] Sisters paid for their possible children, and if these children were of age they paid instead of their mothers. After the age at which they could not have children, the sisters did not pay (i. p. 99). That the daughter after twelve was independent of her father with _da_ of her own, see i. p. 205.

[49] i. p. 229.

[50] i. pp. 77, 103.

[51] ii. p. 693.

[52] i. p. 747.

[53] i. p. 231.

[54] i. p. 271.

[55] i. p. 565.

[56] _English Village Community_, c. ix.

[57] For details and references to the Codes I must refer the reader to Chap. V. of _The Tribal System in Wales_.

[58] See _infra_, p. 319.

[59] In the quotation of passages from _Beowulf_ I have mostly followed Professor Earle’s translations.

[60] See _Structure of Greek Tribal Society_, by H. E. Seebohm, chap. ii.

[61] _Nefan_ cannot mean son or grandson, for Hygelac was his father and his grandfather was Hrethel.

[62] The references in this chapter are to the four volumes of _The Ancient Laws of Ireland_. I regret very much not to have had the advantage of vol. v. edited by Dr. Atkinson and not yet published, but I am greatly indebted to him for his kind help and advice on many difficult points.

[63] iv. p. 259. This passage is abridged.

[64] iii. p. 69.

[65] _Ibid._ and iv. 245-248.

[66] _Cours de Littérature Celtique_, tome vii. _Etude sur le Droit Celtique_, tome i. p. 186.

[67] The view here taken, that the four fines in the geilfine division are classes or grades of relationship, makes more intelligible the rules laid down in the Book of Aicill (iii. 331-335), especially the one which determines that ‘if one person comes up into the “geilfine” so as to make it excessive, a man must go out of it into the “deirbhfine,” and a man is to pass from one division into the other up as far as the indfine, and a man is to pass from that into the community.’ Obviously, as a fresh _generation_ comes into the nearest hearth, a generation at the top naturally moves out of the group. The great-grandfather becomes a great-great-grandfather, and so on.

[68] i. p. 263, and iv. p. 245.

[69] iv. p. 245.

[70] iii. p. 99.

[71] p. 101.

[72] ii. p. 195.

[73] iv. p. 283.

[74] Dr. Atkinson has kindly given me a reference to MS. H. 3-18, 237 and 485, the former of which ends its paragraph on ‘sencleithe’ thus:--‘If he serve from that onward, till the fifth man come and during the time (_his_ time?), then he is a sencleithe and he cannot go from the heirs [comarba] for ever after.’

[75] See _Senchus Mor_, i. p. 76 and iii. p. 43.

[76] i. pp. 65-77.

[77] _Round Towers of Ireland_, p. 219.

[78] Fol. 181, b.b. This will be inserted in Dr. Atkinson’s vol. v. of the Brehon Laws.

[79] In one MS. ‘six score ounces.’

[80] Petrie, _Round Towers of Ireland_, p. 214.

[81] _Tripartite Life of St. Patrick_, ii. p. 372.

[82] _Ibid._ i. p. 212.

[83] Altilia, _i.e._ fattened heifers, Skeat, _sub voce_ ‘heifer.’

[84] The samaisc heifer of the Brehon Laws being ½ oz., and the dairt heifer ⅙ oz., the fattened heifer would naturally take the middle place between them as ¼ oz.

[85] Wasserschleben refers these canons to the fifth century Synod under St. Patrick.

[86] ‘_Si colirio indiguerit_’ seems to be equivalent to the Irish ‘that requires a tent.’ But Dr. Atkinson informs me that the Irish word literally means ‘a plug of lint.’

[87] Compare this clause with the ‘Book of the Angel,’ _Tripartite Life_, ii. p. 355. ‘Item si non receperit prædictum præsulem in hospitium eundem et reclusserit suam habitationem contra illum, septem ancillas (cumala) sive septem annos pœnitentiæ similiter reddere cogatur.’

[88] See _Senchus Mor_, i. p. 43: ‘Equal dire-fine for a king and a bishop, _i.e._ equal honour-price to the “rig tuath” and the bishop, _i.e._ of the church of a “rig tuath.”’

[89] P. 141.

[90] i. p. 127.

[91] _Pœnitentiale Vinnicii_, s. 23; Wasserschleben, p. 113.

[92] _Tripartite Life_, p. 378 _n._

[93] _Questions Historiques_, pp. 105-117.

[94] Pertz, Bluhme’s preface, p. 498.

[95] Bindung’s _Das Burgundisch-Romanische Königreich von 443 bis 532 n. Chr._ chap. i.

[96] Lib. vii. Tit. iii. s. 3.

[97] Lib. vi. Tit. v.

[98] Hessels and Kern, Codex x. Tit. lxi.

[99] Brunner (_Sippe und Wergeld_, p. 31) prefers the reading of the other codices, ‘on either side,’ but the principle is the same; the fisc gets whatever share lapses, whether it be ¼ or ½.

[100] Hessels and Kern, Tit. ci., p. 412. Pertz, _Legg._ 11, 5.

[101] This translation of the final clause does not materially vary in meaning from that of Brunner, _Sippe und Wergeld_, p. 34.

[102] Brunner, _Sippe und Wergeld_, p. 34.

[103] _Sippe und Wergeld_, p. 34.

[104] _Sippe und Wergeld_, p. 36. ‘Es dünkt mir sehr wahrscheinlich, dass auch in der Lex Salica unter den ‘tres proximiores’ Verwandte von drei verschiedenen Parentelen gemeint sind.’

Later examples of division of wergelds in other districts quoted by Brunner show that the division of the kindred into three similar grades or groups was prevalent also in Frisian and Saxon districts.

[105] Codices 3, 7, 8, 9 have ‘de quod non.’

[106] Tit. xxix.

[107] See his essay on this subject in his _Problèmes d’Histoire_, pp. 361 &c.

[108] Brunner, in his _Sippe und Wergeld_, shows this clearly, pp. 1-3.

[109] Blumenstock, i. 266.

[110] Tit. lvi.

[111] Tit. vi.

[112] The clause _De reipus_ is very important in regard to some of these points. But the subject is too difficult a one to be discussed here.

[113] Guérard, on the other hand, says: ‘C’est l’alleu d’un Salien défunt que la loi divise en deux parts: dans l’une est la terre salique, et dans l’autre la terre non salique; mais ces deux terres sont également partie de la succession du défunt.’ _Polyptique d’Irminon_, i. p. 487. But he does not seem to have noted the use of ‘land’ unqualified in the saving clause of the first 4 codices.

[114] _Erbenfolge_, &c., pp. 12-14.

[115] _Deutsches Wirtschaftsleben_, i. p. 39.

[116] _Polypt. d’Irminon_, i. p. 495.

[117] _English Historical Review_, January 1893.

[118] Hessels and Kern, Tit. 78; Pertz, _Leg._ ii. p. 10.

[119] See note in Hessels and Kern, and Amira in his _Erbenfolge_, p. 16 (München, 1874).

[120] See _supra_, pp. 26, 27.

[121] This is repeated, ii. p. 391. ‘The argluyd takes him as a son, and if he die receives his _da_ unless he leaves a son.’ Up to 14 his father was his ‘argluyd.’

[122] Sohm, in his preface to the _Lex_ in Pertz (dated 1882), p. 188, concludes that this clause and clause 36 must be referred to the sixth century. There is a Formula in Marculf’s collection in which instructions are given to a newly appointed official, _inter alia_, to judge Franks, Romans, Burgundians, and those of other nations ‘secundum lege et consuetudine eorum’ (Marc. _Form._, Lib. i. 8.)

[123] In the Burgundian Law the wergeld is 150 solidi; in the Alamannic Law, 160 solidi; in the Bavarian law, 160 solidi. That this was also the wergeld of the Frisian and Saxon see _infra_.

[124] See Merkel’s preface to the laws in Pertz, p. 14.

[125] In the Burgundian laws the division is into ‘optimatus’ with a wergeld of 300 sol., ‘mediocris’ with 200 sol., and ‘minores ’ with 150 sol.

[126] Introduction, p. iv.

[127] Martini, _Metrologia_, _sub_ ‘Roma.’ See also _Traité de Numismatique du Moyen Age_, par A. Engel, vol. i. p. 222.

[128] Pertz, p. 119.

[129] Pertz, p. 149.

[130] _Hludowici et Hlotharii Capitularia_, Pertz, p. 251.

[131] _De Mirac. S. Martini_, l. i. c. 31. Mention of the _aureus_ occurs twenty-four times in the index to his works. Mention of _trientes_ occurs twelve times, and of _argentei_ five times.

[132] In some codices placed at the end of Lib. xii., Tit. ii. See edition of Walter (1824), p. 669.

[133] ‘Ex Isidori Etymologiarum Libris, c. De ponderibus.’ Hultsch, ii. 113.

[134] Twelve argentei (12 × 72 w.g.) = 864 w.g., or at 1:10 the Merovingian solidus of 86·4 w.g.

[135] Pertz, p. 18.

[136] Pertz, p. 31.

[137] Pertz, p. 39.

[138] In this Capitulare three grades of payments are stated, a pound, a half-pound, and five solidi. Five solidi in this scale should be ¼ lb., and in wheat-grains the scale would be 6912, 3456, and 1728. 1728 wheat-grains is 5 solidi of 12 denarii of 28·8.

[139] Capitulare Mantuanum, s. 9, ‘De moneta: ut nullus post Kalendas Augustas istos dinarios quos modo habere visi sumus dare audeat aut recipere: si quis hoc fecerit, vannum nostrum conponat.’

[140] _Beiträge zur Geschichte des Geld- und Münzwesens in Deutschland._

[141] Forty argentei or drachmæ to the solidus would have meant a ratio of about 1:30.

[142] _Polyptique d’Irminon_, Introduction, i. 151. See also No. 82 of St. Gall Charters (Wastmann, i. p. 78), in which is an annual payment of ‘i bovem v solidos valentem’ sub anno A.D. 778.

[143] Pertz, p. 85.

[144] Pertz, p. 114.

[145] Pertz, p. 116.

[146] Pertz, p. 72. Refusing to receive the new denarii must have meant as 12 to the solidus, for the new denarii themselves were heavier than the old ones, 32 wheat-grains instead of 28·8.

[147] Pertz, p. 494. _Karoli II. Edictum Pistense_, A.D. 864: Ut in omni regno nostro non amplius vendatur libra auri purissime cocti, nisi duodecim libris argenti de novis et meris denariis.

Illud vero aurum quod coctum quidem fuerit, sed non tantum ut ex deauratura fieri possit eo libra una de auro vendatur _decem_ libris argenti de novis et meris denariis.

[148] _Traité de Numismatique du Moyen Age_, par Arthur Engel (Paris, 1891), vol. i. pp. 329-332.

[149] Sohm, in his preface to the Ripuarian law in Pertz, against his own former opinion, concludes that clause xxxvi. did go back to the sixth century, and was originally a part of the Lex (p. 188).

[150] See Richthofen’s preface to the Frisian Laws in Pertz, p. 631.

[151] They appear in the ‘_Additio Sapientium_,’ Tit. ii., clauses lxiii. and lxxviii.

[152] ‘Inter Wisaram et Laubachi, duo denarii novi solidus est.’

[153] ‘Inter Laubachi et inter Flehi, tres denarii novæ monetæ solidum faciunt.’

[154] ‘Inter Flehi et Sincfalam solidus est duo denarii et dimidius ad novam monetam.’ That the word _denarius_ was applied to gold as well as silver coins, see mention of the ‘gold penninck’ of Gondebald in _Chronijck van Vrieslandt_, _sub_ A.D. 739.

[155] ‘Inter Laubachi et Wisaram weregildus nobilis 106 solidi et duo denarii, liberi 53 solidi et denarium, liti 26 solidi et dimidius et dimidius tremissis.’

[156] ‘Si nobilis [_or_ liber _or_ litus] nobilem occiderit, 80 solidos componat; de qua muleta duæ partes ad hæredem occisi, tertia ad propinquos ejus proximos pertineat … liberum solidos 53 et unum denarium solvat … litum 27 solidos uno denario minus componat domino suo, et propinquis occisi solidos 9 excepta tertia parte unius denarii.’

[157] ‘Inter Fli et Sincfalam weregeldus nobilis 100 solidi, liberi 50, liti 25 (solidi denarii 3 novæ monetæ).’

[158] ii. lxxxiv.

[159] Tit. vi.

[160] Engel’s _Traité de Numismatique du Moyen Age_, i. 233 and 329.

[161] Martini’s _Manuale de Metrologia_, _sub_ ‘Emden.’ And compare Ridgeway, p. 871. He shows that in Italy and Sicily 10 sheep = 1 cow.

[162] It is true that in the clauses trebling the amounts for wounds it is not directly stated that the _wergelds_ were also trebled; but the use of the words in Tit. I., ‘_in simplo_,’ suggests that it may have been so; whilst the facts that the triple payment for the loss, _e.g._ of the eye, which in the title _De Dolg_ was a half wergeld, would otherwise exceed the full wergeld, and that, in the one case in which in the ‘De Dolg’ the whole wergeld was payable, the amount in the Additio is the _treble_ wergeld, make it almost certain that it was so, otherwise the injury would be paid for at three times the value of a man’s life.

[163] 4608 × 3 = 13824, _i.e._ 160 solidi of 86·4 wheat-grains. The wergeld of the Island of Gotland was also 3 gold marks or 160 solidi of Merovingian standard. See also on the whole question Dr. Brunner’s article ‘Nobiles und Gemeinfreie der Karolingischen Volksrechte’ in _Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung_ &c., vol. xix.

[164] It would exactly equal 200 of the local solidi of two tremisses at a ratio of 1:8, or 160 solidi of 80 wheat-grains instead of 86·4.

[165] Pertz, p. 83.

[166] Pertz, p. 84.

[167] Pertz, p. 34.

[168] Pertz, p. 84.

[169] Pertz, p. 118.

[170] See Du Cange _sub voce_ ‘Pecunia,’ and the cases there mentioned in which the word = _pecudes_, _grex_, &c.

[171] See _Études sur la Lex dicta Francorum Chamavorum et sur ‘Les Francs du Pays d’Amor,’_ par Henri Froidevaux. Paris, 1891, chap. ii.

[172] It has already been stated that the wergeld of the Island of Gotland was three gold marks or 160 Merovingian solidi. But owing to the late date of the Gotland laws it cannot be regarded as certain that the amount was the same at the date of the Ripuarian laws.

[173] The depreciation in weight cannot have been the result of ignorance of the Roman standard. We learn from the excellent table given by Montelius in his _Remains from the Iron Age of Scandinavia_ that the gold solidi of the Eastern Empire found their way into the Islands of Gotland, Oland, and Bornholm in considerable numbers, between A.D. 395 and 518. He shows that, while no silver coins of the Republic or before Nero have been found in Scandinavia, coins belonging to the silver currency of Rome after Nero found their way northwards in considerable numbers. Of Roman coins A.D. 98-192 only four gold coins are known to have been found and 2304 silver coins. Then the gold currency begins, and of dates between A.D. 235-395, sixty-four gold coins have been found and only one solitary silver coin. Lastly came the gold currency of the solidus of Constantine and his successors A.D. 395-518, and of this period 286 gold coins and one silver coin are recorded as having been found in Scandinavia. It is clear, then, that the Roman standard as well as the Roman system of division of the lb. was known in the North. For a long period no doubt the chief trade of the Baltic was with the Byzantine Empire and the East.

[174] _Die Entstehungszeit der älteren Gulathingslög_ von Dr. Konrad Maurer, p. 5.

[175] The Reksthane is an official, and quite a different person from the Bónde.

[176] The Árborinn man seems to be the same as the Aettborinn man, _i.e._ ‘a man born in a kindred.’

[177] Elsewhere called the Odal-born-man.

[178] The hauld seems to have been the same as the odal-born man.

[179] See also the Frostathing Law IV. 31, in which in a similar case the person is outlawed.

[180] The Nefgildi-men include the slayer’s mother’s father, daughter’s son, mother’s brother, sister’s son, father’s sister’s son, mother’s sister’s sons, son’s daughter’s son, daughter’s daughter’s son, brother’s daughter’s son, sister’s daughter’s son.

[181] 4608 × 30 = 138240, and this divided by 8 = 17280 w.g. of gold, _i.e._ 200 gold solidi of 86·4 w.g.

[182] The following is from the _Venedotian Code_, i. p. 179. ‘The ecclesiastical law says that no son is to have the patrimony but the eldest born to the father by the married wife: the law of Howell, however, adjudges it to the youngest son as well as to the oldest (_i.e._ all the sons), and decides that sin of the father or his illegal act is not to be brought against a son as to his patrimony.’ Bastards were not excluded till the Statute of Rothllan.

[183] ‘Geschlecht und Verwandtschaft im alt-norwegischen Rechte,’ in the _Zeitschrift für Social- und Wirthschaftsgeschichte_, vol. vii. (Weimar). To this essay I am much indebted.

[184] Some authorities infer from this that the _parents_ alone were put in the grave. K. von Maurer thinks _only the children_, and apologises for it as ‘nur eine aus grauer Vorzeit überlieferte Antiquität.’

[185] Skåne, being only divided from the island of Zealand by the Sound, during the Viking period belonged to Denmark. It afterwards became a Swedish province, being finally ceded by Denmark in 1658.

[186] The various views upon the relation of the two versions to each other are very usefully discussed in the introduction to M. Beauchet’s _Loi de Vestrogothie_ (Paris, 1894), pp. 67-75. The Latin version was published in 1846 at Copenhagen as Vol. I. of the _Samling af Danske Love_ and both Latin and Danish versions in Dr. Schlyter’s _Corpus Juris Sueo-Gotorum antiqui_, Lund. 1859.

[187] See Du Cange, _s. v._ ‘Moventes’ = _pecudes_.

[188] ‘Filius-familias’ in another MS.

[189] As to the _fælagh_ or partnership between husband and wife, see the Gulathing Law, 53. The word _fælagh_ seems to be equivalent to the ‘_definitio_’ of the Latin text, the _definitio_ of the property being made at the time of the marriage. The word seems to be allied to the English word ‘fellowship.’ See Skeat, _sub_ ‘fellow,’ who refers it to Icelandic ‘felag,’ literally ‘a laying together of property.’

[190] See _Untersuchungen zur Erbenfolge &c._, Julius Ficker, ii. p. 143: ‘Gulathingsbuch und Frostathingsbuch kennen keinen Eintritt der Sohnessöhne in das volle Recht des Parens.’

[191] Beauchet, p. 60.

[192] Addition F. 1.

[193] _Skanska Stadsrätten_, s. 43.

[194] See I. s. 92 of the Danish version. The word Manbötær = _mulcta homicidii_, Schlyter, Gloss. _sub voce_.

[195] See _Ancient Laws of Scotland_, preface, p. 42.

[196] _Ibid._ i. 8.

[197] These extracts are abridged and put into modern English.

[198] Compare the colpindach with the Irish ‘colpach heifer.’ In the _Crith Gabhlach_, p. 300, the Irish text has the word _colpdaig_ translated ‘colpach heifer.’ Probably the xxix should be ixˣˣ, _i.e._ 180. See _Ancient Laws of Scotland_, p. 270 (red paging), as to the next clause.

[199] ‘Oc-thigernd’ = ‘Jung herr,’ Windisch, p. 757.

[200] _Scotland under her early Kings_, i. p. 258 _n._, and ii. p. 307.

[201] _Ancient Laws of Scotland_, i. p. 233.

[202] _History of English Law_, Pollock and Maitland, i. pp. 145 and 202. There is an elaborate comparison of this Scotch treatise with Glanville’s in the _Ancient Laws of Scotland_ commencing at p. 136 (red), which is very helpful.

[203] _Book of Deer_, preface, p. lxxxi. Toshach (toisech). The two officers in a townland were the _mormaer_ and the _toisech_. _Ced_ in Irish = hundred. Tosh-_ced_-erach possibly may have meant ‘head of the hundred.’

[204] See _infra_, c. xi.

[205] Robertson’s _Historical Essays_, p. 47.

[206] See preface to the _Ancient Laws of Scotland_.

[207] Gulathing law, s. 152.

[208] See Windisch, _Wörterbuch_, sub voce ‘_ter-fochrice_,’ also ‘_fo-chraic_.’

[209] Vol. i. p. 655.

[210] This passage is from the last clause in the so-called treaty between Edward and Guthrum, ‘when the English and Danes fully took to peace and to friendship, and the Witan also who were afterwards, oft and unseldom that same renewed and increased with good.’ Thorpe, p. 71; and see Schmid’s _Einleitung_, p. xlii.

[211] 120_s._ of 5_d._ = 50_s._ of 12_d._

[212] Three marks are double 12 ores.

[213] See the instances of services of sochemen given by Mr. Round in his invaluable chapter on the Domesday book in his _Feudal England_, pp. 30-34, from the ‘Ely placitum’ of 1072-1075: ‘Qui _quotiens abbas preceperit_ in anno arabunt suam terram’ &c. And again _quotienscunque ipse præceperit_ in anno arabunt’ &c. These are services of the sochemanni of Suffolk and Norfolk ‘qui non possunt recedere.’

[214] Cf. Ine, 74. The xl_s._ to be paid for the ‘Waliscus’ slave who had committed homicide may be double value by way of penalty.

[215] Laws of Cnut, s. 63 and s. 66.

[216] Mr. Keary’s Introduction to the Catalogue of the Coins in the British Museum, Anglo-Saxon series, vol. ii. p. lxxxi.

[217] Engel, vol. ii. p. 849 et seq.

[218] Introduction, vol. ii. p. lvii.

[219] The word is used in the sense of mint-master or money coiner. See Du Cange, _sub voce_ ‘Monetarius.’

[220] The Anglo-Saxon pound of 240 pence or 364 grammes divided by fifteen = 24·2 grammes.

[221] The normal weight of the English penny of 32 wheat-grains was 1·51 grammes. The coins of Cnut’s predecessors sometimes fully reached this standard, though oftener somewhat below it. The exact weight of 1/20 of the Danish ore would be 1·21 grammes, and Cnut’s silver pence seem to aim at this weight. Out of 574 silver pence of Cnut described in the Catalogue of the British Museum 400 weigh between ·972 and 1·23 grammes. Only 1½ per cent. are of greater weight. Ethelred’s silver pence were not by any means generally of full standard of 32 wheat-grains or 1·51 grammes, but still, out of 339 in the British Museum 25 per cent. are fairly up to this standard and 90 per cent. are above the weight of the new silver pence of Cnut--1/20 of his ore. Cnut also reduced the _size_ of the pence. See the B. M. Catalogue plates.

[222] ‘Grith’ seems to be a Danish word of nearly the same meaning as ‘frith.’ See Schmid’s Glossary, _sub voce_.

[223] This is in accordance with Ine, 6.

[224] Laws of Ethelred, ix. (Thorpe, p. 145).

[225] Thorpe, p. 124.

[226] MS. G. British Museum, Cott. Nero A. 1. fol. 5.

[227] Thorpe, p. 141, Schmid, _Anhang iv._

[228] Compare Æthelstan, iv. 4.

[229] This, from the Kentish Laws, was correctly quoted.

[230] Schmid, _Anhang xii._

[231] Pollock and Maitland, i. p. 20. But see Laws of King Edmund, s. 4, ‘On Blood-shedding.’ ‘Also I make known that I will not have to “_socn_” in my “hirede” that man who sheds man’s blood before he has undertaken ecclesiastical “bot” and made “bot” to the kindred,’ &c. See also in s. 6 the use of the words ‘_mund-brice_ and _Ham-socn_.’

[232] Another reading has xxx. See Schmid, p. 206. The Latin version has xxv, and the quotation in the Laws of Henry I also has xxv.

[233] 25 × 240 = 6000 pence = 1200 Wessex scillings of 5_d._

[234] Catalogue of English Coins, Anglo-Saxon series. Introduction, p. xxxi, to vol. ii.

[235] Thorpe (p. 75) appends this clause to the so-called Laws of Edward and Guthrum. But Schmid considers it as a fragment and places it in his _Anhang vii._

[236] Schmid, _Anhang vii._ 2; Thorpe, p. 79.

[237] A ceorl’s wergeld is cclxvi thrymsas, _i.e._ cc scillings by Mercian law. 266⅔ × 3 = 800 pence or 200 Mercian scyllings of 4 pence.

[238] From the text of MS. D.

[239] The fragment itself is a combination of two or more. But the statement of wergelds in _thrymsas_ seems to unite them. Schmid also points out that the _eorl_ had not yet superseded the ealdorman. See _Einleitung_, p. lxv.

[240] 2000 thrymsas of 3_d._ equalled 1200 Wessex scillings of 5_d._, so that the ceorl with five hides to the king’s utware became a twelve-hynde man. There is no allusion to the six-hynde status as a halfway step towards the gesithcund status. And the use of the word ‘gesithcund’ seems to throw back the original date of these clauses to that of Ine’s law, the word not being used in later laws. See Schmid’s _Glossary_, sub voce ‘Gesith.’

[241] _I.e._ of pure silver. Compare the same phrase ‘de novis et meris denariis’ in the _Edictum Pistense_, A.D. 864, quoted _supra_, p. 191, n.

[242] See _supra_, p. 344.

[243] _Ancient Laws of Ireland_, vol. iv. p. 227.

[244] See _supra_, p. 345.

[245] Ine came to the throne in A.D. 688, and Alfred’s treaty with Guthrum was in A.D. 880.

[246] See Schmid’s Glossary _sub voce_ ‘Eideshülfe.’ There is only one mention of oaths of so many hides in the later Anglo-Saxon laws, viz. in Alfred, s. 11, in which it is stated that a woman must clear herself from a charge of previous unchastity with 60 hides.

[247] The monk’s oath was one fourth of the priest’s in value: so 400 _argentei_ = one fourth of 800 _sicli_.

[248] See Schmid’s introduction, where he states his reasons for placing Ine’s Dooms before Alfred’s in his edition of the Laws.

[249] This is repeated in Henry I. lxix.

[250] Schmid, _Anhang ii._

[251] Schmid, Glossary, _sub voc._ ‘Die Britischen Einwohner von Cumberland.’ But the mention of York is conclusive.

[252] See Schmid’s note on this passage, and see also Liebermann’s translation.

[253] Thorpe, p. 150; Schmid, _Anhang i._

[254] The only mark of the geographical position of the district is that in the final clause: ‘Formerly the Went-sætas belonged to the Dun-sætas, but more properly they belong to the West Saxons; there they shall give tribute and hostages.’

[255] Translated in the Latin version by ‘corium,’ the meaning probably being that 12 scillings would buy off a scourging.

[256] In the Laws of Henry I. (lxx. s. 5) the ‘theow-wealh’ is translated ‘servus Waliscus,’ and is worth double the ordinary slave, unless the amount be a double penalty.

[257] The usual explanation of these terms is that they are derived from the number of shillings in the wergeld. Mr. Earle in his valuable _Handbook to the Land Charters_ &c. (p. 1) considers ‘hynde’ to be an old form of ‘ten’ and to refer to the number of soldiers of whom the twelve-hynde and six-hynde men were captains. ‘The former was a captain of 120 and the latter of 60.’ Neither of these explanations seems to me to be satisfactory.

[258] This view that the single oath of the twelve-hyndeman was reckoned as a 10 hide oath is confirmed by the translation in the Latin of the _Quadripartitus_ of Ine’s Laws, s. 46. The Anglo-Saxon ‘þonne sceal he be lx hyda onsacan,’ is translated by ‘tunc debet per lx hidas _i.e._ _per vi homines_ abnegare.’ And in s. 19 ‘potest jurare pro lx hidis _i.e._ _pro hominibus vi_.’ Schmid remarks on these passages: ‘Hiernach würde also jeder Eideshelfer 10 Hiden vertreten.’

[259] Schmid, p. 157; Thorpe, p. 97.

[260] _Judicia Civitatis Lundoniæ_, c. 8, s. 2; _Ath. L._ vi.

[261] _Decretum Episcoporum et aliorum sapientum de Kancia de pace observanda._ _Ath. L._ iii.

[262] Birch, No. 102, A.D. 701.

[263] _Ib._ 113, A.D. 705.

[264] _Ib._ 142, A.D. 725.

[265] _Hist. Eccl._ lib. iii. c. 24.

[266] _Glossary_, sub voce ‘Gesith,’ and see Bede, iii. 14 and 22, iv. 4 and 10, and v. 4 and 5.

[267] Bede, ii. c. ix.

[268] _English Village Community_, chap. v.

[269] See _Transactions of the Royal Historical Society_, New Series, vol. xiv.

[270] _English Village Community_, p. 117 _et seq._

[271] Birch, 412.

[272] Roxburgh Club, p. 138.

[273] Compare _ærdian_, to inhabit; and so _bur_bærde and _theow_bærde, as below.

[274] About A.D. 995. Cod. Dip. 1290.

[275] _Cod. Dip._ mcccliv. See also _Liber Eliensis_, p. 120.

[276] Alfred, s. 37.

[277] See _supra_, pp. 180-185.

[278] The difference in spelling will be noticed. The Kentish spelling is mostly _scætt_. Elsewhere the spelling is _sceatt_.

[279] Schmid, _Anhang vii._ p. 398.

[280] It cannot be right, I think, to reason the other way with Schmid, that as there were 30,000 sceatts in the King’s wergeld of 120 pounds, there must have been 250 sceatts in the pound and 4·166 sceatts in the Mercian scilling instead of four.

[281] Catalogue &c., Introduction, p. xviii.

[282] ‘We must remember further that many of the coins of the Kings of Mercia were probably likewise struck in Kent, and that when we find, as we do, the same moneyers’ names occurring on the coins of a King of Mercia … and on the coins of Ecgbeorht, the probability is that these moneyers were Kentishmen who struck first for one master of their country and then for the other’ (_Ib._ p. xvii).

[283] See Schmid’s _Glossary_, sub voce.

[284] See Laws of Ethelbert, ss. 77, 78 and 79, and 83.

[285] In translating Luke xx. 24 and Mark xii. 15, ‘Show me a penny,’ the word used to translate ‘denarius’ is _skatt_.

Again, Luke vii. 41, the two debtors, one owing 500 and the other 50 denarii, are translated by Ulphilas as owing ‘skatte finfhunda’ and ‘skatte finftiguns.’

Again in John xii. 5, ‘Why was not the ointment sold for 300 denarii?’ ‘ccc skatti’ are the words used, and so also in the parallel passage Mark xi. 5, ‘thrijahunda skatti.’

In all these cases it seems to be clear that the _skatt_ is the _coin_. And that it was a silver coin seems to be shown by the use by Ulphilas of the word _skatt_ in reference to the ‘thirty pieces of silver’ in Matt. xxvii. 6-9.

[286] The word occurs seven times in the five Gothic records from Naples and Arezzo generally appended to editions of ‘Ulfilas.’ In the edition of Massmann (Stuttgart, 1857) see vol. ii. p. 810. In that of Heyne and Wrede (Paderborn, 1896) see p. 227 &c.

[287] Schmid, _Anhang x._ p. 404; Thorpe, p. 76.

[288] This may be doubtful: _Sceatta scilling-rim_, ‘gold to the worth of 600 scillings,’ Grein, ii. p. 408; _sceatta_, gen. plural of ‘sceatt,’ _nummus, pecunia_. Grein, ii. p. 405.

[289] British Museum Catalogue, Anglo-Saxon series, vol. i. xiii.

[290] See Schmid’s _Glossary_, sub ‘Geldrechnung,’ p. 594. The inference seems to be too strong to be disregarded. Comparing s. 54 with ss. 70-72, the great toe is valued at 10 scillings, _i.e._ half the value of the thumb in s. 54, viz. 20 scillings. And it is stated in s. 54 that the thumb nail is worth 3 scillings, and in s. 72 that the toe nail is to be paid for at 30 scætts, which would be half 3 scillings of 20 sceatts. The other toes are said in s. 71 to be respectively worth half the fingers. The finger nail in s. 71 at 1 scilling compares with the other toe nails at 10 scætts in s. 72--again one half. Presuming that the scale of one half is maintained throughout, 30 scætts is half 3 scillings and 10 scætts half one scilling. The scilling, therefore, must be 20 scætts.

This conclusion is strengthened by the graduated scale of payments in ss. 33-36, viz. 50 scætts (_i.e._ 1½ scilling) 3, 4, 10, 20 scillings. See also s. 16, where the scale is 30, 50 (? 60) sceatts and 6 scillings (120 scætts). In ss. 58-60 a bruise is 1 scilling, covered 30 scætts, uncovered 20 scætts. It seems to be impossible to make these figures comport with the Mercian scilling of 4 scætts or the Wessex of 5 scætts or the Salic solidus of 40 scætts. The conclusion must be that the Kentish scilling was of 20 scætts.

[291] 576 divided by 10 = 57·6, _i.e._ two tremisses of 28·8 wheat grains.

[292] Alfred’s words were: ‘But those things which I met with, either of the days of Ine my kinsman, or of Offa King of the Mercians, or of Æthelbryht, who first among the English race received baptism, those which seemed to me the rightest, those I have here gathered together and omitted the others.’

[293] British Museum Cott. Nero A. 1. fol. 5, and _supra_, p. 346.

[294] British Museum, _ibid._ fol. 33 b.

[295] See Gulathing, 178.

[296] Compare Cnut’s secular laws, s. 59, on _Borh-bryce_. In both passages the additional words ‘and three to the archbishop’ do not seem to be taken from Kentish law. It is obvious from the fragment ‘Of Grith and of Mund’ that it was well known that in Kentish law ‘the mund-bryce of the King and the archbishop were the same.’

[297] See also _Anhang iv._ Schmid, p. 385.

[298] See Schmid, _Glossary_, sub ‘Geldrechnung,’ p. 594.

[299] Konrad von Maurer’s ‘Ueber Angelsächsische Rechtsverhältnisse,’ in the _Kritische Ueberschau_, vol. iii. p. 48.

[300] Compare the ‘octogild’ and ‘novigild’ of the Alamannic and other laws. The literal meaning of ‘xii gylde’ seems to be payable with ‘twelve times the gylde.’

[301] The division of the words in the MS. is as follows: ‘Gif cyninges ambiht smið oþþe laadrinc mannan of slehð medumanleod gelde forgelde.’

[302] So also Grimm in his _Deutsche Rechts Alterthümer_, p. 653, ‘dimidio, nicht moderato, wie Wilk. übersetzt.’ Compare ‘medeme mynster,’ _supra_, p. 346, and ‘medeme thegn,’ Cnut, ii. 71, s. 2.

[303] Possibly the King’s servants were otherwise exempt for injuries done in carrying out their work.

[304] Cf. _Book of Aicill_, p. 267, where injury inflicted in _quick driving or at work_ has only a half fine; ‘the excitement of the work or of quick driving takes the other half fine off them.’ See also the elaborate rules with regard to accidents of the smith in his smithy, p. 187 &c. The general rule stated is ‘that the person who plies the sledge on the anvil is exempt from penalties for injuries arising from the work he is engaged on;’ and again ‘if either the sledge or anvil break, he is exempt for injuries to idlers, and he pays one third compensation to fellow labourers, &c.’ Clerical influence may perhaps be recognised in both the Brehon and Kentish clauses.

[305] That the soul-scot in later times was paid at the open grave see Ethelred, v. 12, vi. 20, ix. 13; C. E. 13.

[306] Compare s. 86 and 87, where _ealne weorðe_ means a ‘whole worth’ of an esne, and contrast the ‘medume leodgild’ of 100 scillings payable as bot by the lender with the ‘ealne leod’ payable by the slayer.

[307] That the _esne_ was very near in position to the ‘theow’ see Alf. 43, where Church holidays are to be given to ‘all freemen but _not to theow-men and esne work-men_’--‘butan þeowum mannum & esne-wyrhtum.’

[308] Liebermann considers that the 300 and 100 scillings are the wergeld of the eorlcundman and the freeman. His translation reads: ‘welcher steht im 300-Scillwergelde’ and ‘welcher im 100-Scillwergelde steht.’ Whether these payments are the wergelds is the point at issue. Schmid, in his note to this passage, favours the view that 300 scillings was the _half_-wergeld of the eorl and 100 scillings the half-wergeld of the freeman.

[309] xxxv. 5. ‘Si servus alienus aut laetus hominem ingenuum occiderit, ipse homicida pro medietatem compositionis illius hominis occisi parentibus tradatur, et dominus servi aliam medietatem compositionis se noverit soluiturum.’

[310] ‘Ceorlian,’ to marry a husband; ‘wifian,’ to marry a wife. Bosworth, _sub voce_.

[311] _Supra_, p. 259.

[312] _Supra_, p. 176.

[313] _Supra_, p. 199.

[314] _Supra_, p. 169.

[315] In the Bavarian and Saxon laws the _litus_ was paid for at one fourth the wergeld of the _liber_. The inference from this might strengthen the view that the Kentish wergeld of the ceorl could hardly be as low as 100 scillings.

[316] I adhere to this view after careful consideration of the elaborate argument in the _Die Gemeinfreien der Karolingischen Volksrechte_, von Philipp Heck (Halle, 1900), in reply to the criticism by H. Brunner in the _Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte_, xix Band, 1899.

[317] 1200 scillings of 4_d._ with one fourth added = 1200 scillings of 5_d._

[318] _Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte_, i. 225-6.

[319] 60 + 40 Kentish scillings = 1200 + 800 scætts. The average 1000 sceatts = 200 Wessex scillings of 5 scætts.

[320] _Supra_, p. 265.

[321] _Supra_, p. 367.

[322] _Supra_, p. 322; and Laws of Alfred, s. 27 and 38.

[323] _Supra_, pp. 415-416.

[324] This is not the place to enter into the details of the Kentish holdings, but reference may be made by way of example to the 5½ ‘sulings’ of ‘Christelet’ in the _Black Book of St. Augustine_. The suling is still the unit for services and payments. The ‘_Suling de Fayreport_’ contains 300 acres (and was probably originally a suling and a half), but it is divided into 11 holdings, 8 of 25 acres each and 3 of 33⅓ acres each. Six of the eleven holdings are still occupied by persons bearing the name of ‘de Fayreport’ or the ‘heredes’ of such persons, and probably the others may belong to relatives. The ‘_Suling de Ores_’ is, on the other hand, divided into about 40 quite irregular holdings, varying from less than an acre to 44 acres. Several are still occupied by ‘heredes’ of persons of the family ‘de Ores.’ (Cottonian MSS. Faustina, A. 1, British Museum, fol. 567 _et seq._) The manor ‘de Ores’ is in the list of those afterwards disgavelled: see Elton’s _Tenures of Kent_, p. 400.

[325] See Mr. Round’s interesting chapter, ‘Sokemen and their Services.’ (_Feudal England_, pp. 28-34.)

[326] _Domesday Book and beyond_, p. 306 _et seq._

[327] _Ibid._ pp. 204-209.

[328] Compare Brunner’s chapter 32, ‘Adel und Freie,’ in his _Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte_, p. 247 _et seq._, with _Das Römische Recht in den Germanischen Volksstaaten_, von Prof. Dr. Alfred von Halban (Breslau, 1899), pp. 132, 207, 262, 280, and 294. And see Dahn’s chapter ‘Der Adel,’ p. 88 _et seq._, in his _Die Könige der Germanen_, Band vi. (Leipzig, 1885).

[329] Compare the tendency to triple divisions in the Kentish Laws: _supra_, p. 465.

[330] Marculfe, ii. 18 and 16. _Formulæ Lindenbrogianæ_, 16. And see F. de Coulanges’ useful chapter on ‘Organisation judiciaire chez les Francs’ in _Quelques problèmes d’histoire_ (1885).

INDEX.

_Aillts and Alltuds_ (strangers in blood) under Cymric law, 50, 51; kindreds of, recognised at fourth generation, 52

_Alamannic Laws_, 172-178; wergelds, 172-175; value of animals, 178

_Alcuin_ uses Roman currency, 19, 184

_Alfred, K._, his laws, 370-377, 392, 396; compact with Guthrum, 352-355, 500

_Alod of land_, a family holding, 508; Lex Salica ‘de alodis,’ 151; Ripuarian law, 170; Lex Angliorum et Werinorum, 226

_Ancilla_ as currency, see ‘Cumhal’

_Anglii and Werini_, Laws of, 224-228; Wergelds of _liber_ 200 _sol._, 225; triple wergeld of the _Adaling_, 225

_Anglo-Saxon Custom_, 321 _et seq._; from Norman point of view, 321-336; from Danish point of view, 337-350; from Viking or Northmen’s point of view, 351-368; from early custom (Alfred’s Laws), 370-377; Archbishop Egbert’s Dialogue, 377-385; King Ine’s Dooms, 386-439; Kentish Laws, 441-495; Twelve-hynde and twy-hynde classes, 406-416; Gesithcund and Ceorlisc classes, 417-436; Six-hynde stranger class, 371, 392, 396; position of wife, 326

_Anglo-Saxon Wergelds_, position of paternal and maternal parentes in payment of, 322, 323, 328, 358; of thane or twelve-hynde man, 325; of ‘freeman,’ Dane and English, 326, 349, 353-55; of ‘cyrlisci vel villani,’ 328; of ‘villanus et socheman’ in Danelaga, 331-332; of ‘ceorl on gafol-land’ and Danish ‘lysing,’ 353, 355; how paid, 329, 357-59

_Animals_, value of as currency: Ripuarian, 171; Saxon, 215, 217, 221; Alamannic, 178; Cymric cow 3 oz., 48, 49; Irish _bo_ 1 oz., 97; Frisian dog, 202

_Argenteus_ (silver drachma) of Roman currency. See ‘Currency’

_Bavarian Laws_, 175-177; wergelds, 174

_Beowulf_, evidence of, as to feuds, 56-72; as ‘sister’s son’ becomes chieftain, 68; as to marriage, 71, 72

_Borhbryce_, fine for breach of pledge or protection, like mundbryce, 347; of various classes, 377

_Bullock_ as currency in Saxon Laws, 217

_Burgundian Laws_, 121-125, 527; original wergeld of 160 sol., 167; Roman and Christian influence on, 527

_Burh-bryce_ (_Burg-bryce_) (breach of fence of precinct), of various classes, 372, 377, 387

_Cæsar_, evidence of, as to Gallic wergelds, 115-120; and on Gallic landholding, 116; as to division of classes, 528

_Canones Hibernenses_, 101

_Canones Wallici_, 105-109

_Ceorl_ = man--husband, 482; so man with household and flet or precinct, 371, 394, 482--‘who sits on gafol-land’ twy-hynde, 353-355, 361; ceorlisc class mostly gafolgeldas, and twy-hynde, 373; once could rise to be twelve-hynde, 366, 503; accused of theft, 388; harbouring a fugitive, 390; his mundbyrd in Kent, see ‘Mundbyrd’

_Chamavi_, laws of, 229-231; wergeld of _ingenuus_ 200 sol., 229; triple wergeld of ‘Homo Francus,’ 229

_Charlemagne_, conquest of Italy, 181; becomes emperor, 19, 181; and issues _nova moneta_ in silver solidi of 12_d._ and at 1:4 with gold, 182-194; conquers Frisians and Saxons, 182, 195

_Cnut._ His greater Scandinavia, 339; his ore of 1/15th lb. or 16_d._, 341; his smaller silver pence, 343

_Compurgation_, under Frisian law, 203-205; under Anglo-Saxon law, see ‘Hyndens’ and see ‘Werborh’

_Congildones_ = gegildas, sureties in lieu of kinsmen, 323, 389, 415

_Cows_, as currency, 1. In Cymric law, 49; Irish, 97; Alamannic, 178; value of, see ‘Animals’; Norse, 247-250; Bretts and Scots, 307

_Cumhal_ in Irish currency, 97-98 = female slave and ‘ancilla’ of the _Canones Hibernenses and Wallici_, 101, 109

_Currency_, in oxen: ox-unit of Professor Ridgeway, 2; in cows, Cymric, 1, 49; Irish, 97; Norse, 247-250; Bretts and Scots, 307; in cumhals, ancillæ or female slaves, 97-98, 101, 109; in gold torques, &c., 17; Anglo-Saxon in silver _sceatts_ of 28·8 w.g. or 20 to the Roman ounce, 12, 443-455; in silver _pence_ of 32 w.g. or 20 to the Frankish and Norman ounce, 12; gold and silver _mancus_ of 30_d._, 18, 329; Mercian _scilling_ of 4_d._, 12, 363; Wessex _scilling_ of 5_d._, 12, 325; Kentish _scilling_ of 20_d._, or two gold tremisses, 443-455; Northumbrian _thrymsa_ of 3_d._, 362-368; Danish in marks and half-marks, 16, 353-354; Cnut’s in ores of 16_d._, 306, 341, 343 (see ‘Ore’); Imperial in gold solidi and tremisses of 32 w.g., 5, 6; in silver sicli (didrachmæ) and argentei (drachmæ), 184, 382; Merovingian in gold solidi and tremisses of 28·8 w.g., 9; afterwards in silver tremisses, 10, 180, 443-445; Charlemagne’s _nova moneta_ in silver solidi of 12_d._ of 32 w.g., 10, 11, 186, _et seq._; of Norse laws in gold and silver marks, ores and ortugs at ratio 1:8, 233-238

_Cymric_ tribal custom as to galanas, 30; fiscal unit for food-rents, the tref and treffgordd, 33-42; strangers, how treated, 50-54; as to marriage, 32; galanas of several classes paid in cows, 46-55. See ‘Gwely,’ ‘Galanas’

_Danelaga_, 331-332, 338, 522

_Ealdorman_ in judicial position, 387; his burgbryce, 387; his fightwite, 394; his residence, 420

_Egbert_, Archbishop, Dialogue of, 377 _et seq._; uses Roman currency, 20, 379; wergeld of his monks, 382, 491; value of their oaths, 379

_Eye, hand, and foot_, payments for, 175, 222, 225, 252, 300, 465, 489

_Fightwite_, fine for fighting within a person’s precinct or jurisdiction, 328-332, 359, 393; in a ceorl’s flet, 371, 394, 482

_Firma unius noctis_, mode of paying food-rents to chieftain, 41, 431

_Frankish Tribal Custom._ Wergeld of Lex Salica of 200 sol., 131-146; division of classes, 147; triple wergeld of officials, 148; half wergeld of strangers, 149; the Alod or family holding of _terra Salica_, 150; the ‘_de alodis_,’ 151, 170, 226; edict of Chilperic, 159; Ripuarian Law, 163-171; wergeld of 200 sol., 163; division of classes, 165

_Fredus_, payment for breach of king’s peace, equivalent to A.S. mundbryce or grithbryce, 488, 489

_Freedman_ (libertus) under Frankish Law, 168-170, 199; under Bavarian Law, 175; under Kentish Law, 478, 484. And see ‘Læt’ and ‘Leysing’

_Frisian Laws_, 194-212; wergeld of 160 sol., 167, 195, 201, 210; ordeal under, 203-5

_Frith_, between Ethelred II. and Olaf, 349; between Alfred and Guthrum, 352-355

_Frostathing Law_ (Ancient Norse), 238-276. See ‘Norse Tribal Custom’

_Gafolgeldas_, tenants on others’ land paying gafol to their lord, with twy-hynde wergelds, 353-355; fighting in gafolgelda or gebur’s house, 394. See ‘Twy-hynde’

_Galanas_ (Cymric death fine or wergeld), 30; liability of kindred for, 30-32; method of payment, 42-46; amount of, 46-49; of non-tribesmen goes to the lord, 54

_Gebur_, tenant of a yardland doing work and paying gafol to lord for house and oxen, 422-429; fighting in house of gafolgelda or gebur, 394

_Gegildas_ (see ‘Congildones’) sureties in lieu of kinsmen, 323, 389; hyndens of frith-gegildas in the city, 415

_Gesithcund class_, in direct service to the king and twelve-hynde, 366; in landed position with five hides to king’s utware, 369; forfeit land if they neglect the fyrd, 391; in their connection with land, 417 _et seq._; sometimes evicted, 433

_Grith_, Danish for _frith_ or peace, 344-348; grithbryce of English and mundbryce of Kentish law the same, 346; extent in area, 348; in duration of time, 346; of different moots, 345

_Gulathing Law_, oldest Norse law, 238-276. See ‘Norse Tribal Custom’

_Gwely_ (Cymric family holding of four generations), 21-30; of non-tribesmen, 52

_Halsfang_, first part of wergeld paid to those ‘within the knee,’ 328, 329, 359

_Hide_ in agriculture of four yardlands, 423; Mr. Corbett on tribal hidage, 424; in pastoral stage, 424; = _familia_ of Bede, also = _hiwisc_, 407; also = ‘manentes et tributarii’ of Archbishop Egbert, 381, 408; oaths reckoned in hides, 381, 408; the 10-hide oath of the twelve-hyndeman, 411; oath of himself and hynden of oath-helpers, 120; hides, 411

_Hiwisc_ (family) of land = hide, 364, 381

_Homicide._ Within the family unavenged, 30, 63, 66, 164, 176, 241, 336; by a slave, 108, 202, 333, 472, 474; of a slave, 202, 333; between kindreds caused blood-feud, see ‘Beowulf,’ or wergeld in lieu of it. See ‘Wergeld’

_Hyndens_ of oath-helpers, 409; of twelve-hynde and twy-hynde class, 409-411; of city frith-gegildas, 415

_Ine, K._ Laws of, 386-439; as to theft, 387-389; burgbryce, 387; ealdorman, 387-894; gesithcund class, 388, 391; six-hynde class, 392, 396; gafolgeldas and geburs, 393; ceorlisc class, 391, 396; wealh and wylisc class, 397-405; twelve-hynde and twy-hynde classes, 400-417; gesithcund and ceorlisc classes, 417-436; comparison of Wessex and Mercian with continental wergelds, 436

_Irish Tribal Custom_, 73-120; the Eric-fine consisting of (1) the _coirp-dire_, or body-price, of seven cumhals, 74; in Irish and Breton canons, 101 _et seq._; (2) the _eneclann_, or honour-price, varies with rank, 75, 80-83, 92; the hearths or kindreds liable, 76-80; gradations in rank, 83-86; grades of tenants, 86 _et seq._; currency, 97

_Kentish Laws_, currency in scætts and scillings, 443-455; scilling of 20 scætts or two gold tremisses, 450-455; laws of Ethelbert, 455-466; of Hlothære and Eadric, 467-476; of Wihtræd, 477-481; division of classes, 481-487; Kentish wergelds, 487-492; compared with Continental and Anglo-Saxon wergelds 492-495; Kentish sulungs and yokes, 514-515; gavelkind holdings, 515; Kentish læts, 463, 484-486, 502

_Kindred_, solidarity of, 30, 45, 157, 276; grades of, 22, 30, 76, 318; disintegration of, 111, 124, 129, 162, 164; emancipation from restraints of, 134, 158, 507; power of, in East Anglia and Kent, 415, 416; liability of, for wergeld, under Cymric custom, 42, 45; Irish, 77-80; Breton, 109; Burgundian and Wisigothic, 121-130; Salic Franks, 144, 164; Frisian, 212; Saxon, 216; Norse, 246-257; Scanian, 290, and see ‘Anglo-Saxon wergelds;’ groups of, holding land, Cymric gwely, 21-30; Alod of _terra salica_, 150-162, 183; Ripuarian _hereditas aviatica_, 171; Norse odal-sharers, 271-275; Scanian family holdings, 276-288; Anglo-Saxon family holdings, 511-516

_King’s thane_, oath of, 353, 368, 390

_Læt_, in Kentish Law of three grades, 463, 484-486, 502. See ‘Leysing’ and ‘Freedman’

_Leases for three successive lives_, tribal reason for, 524; St. Oswald’s tenants, 525

_Leysing_ in Norse law, newly made freedman, his rett, 240; his wergeld, 259; his want of kindred and his rise by steps of three generations into freedom, 260-267

_Leysing’s son_, great grandson of leysing in higher social position, 259, 268

_Litus_, Ripuarian, 168; Frisian, 199, 201-207; Saxon, 214, 215, 219, 224; of Chamavi, 229

_Lombardic tribal custom_ compared with Scanian as to family holdings, 292-296

_London_, ‘De Institutis Lundonie,’ 337-344; Port of the Greater Scandinavia in Cnut’s time, 339; ‘Judicia Civitatis Lundoniæ,’ 415

_Lysing_ (leysing of Norse law), with same wergeld as A. S. ‘Ceorl on gafol land,’ 353-355, 501. See ‘Leysing’

_Manbot_, payment for value of a man to his lord, 328-332, 359; of freeman and of slave compared, 334-335; of various classes, 392

_Mancus_, weight of 30 dwts., 18, 329

_Mark_, Norse gold and silver weight of eight ores or ounces, 234-237; used in Frisia, 207; half-marks of gold in compact between Alfred and Guthrum, 353; 27 marks of Charlemagne= 30 of old Norse and Merovingian, 256

_Marriage_, how regarded, 498; under Cymric custom, 32; in Beowulf, 69-72; in Lex Salica, 146; under Alamannic law, 177; under Lex Saxonum, 216; under Scanian law, 276-281; under Lombardic law, 294; under Laws of Bretts and Scots, 318; under Kentish custom, 465-466

_Mercian_ law, fragments of, 360-369; Mercian oaths, 360; wergelds, 361; rise of ceorl into thane, 366

_Merovingian_ kings, currency of, mostly in gold tremisses, see ‘Currency’

_Mina_, gold value of normal wergeld, 4; ancient Eastern of 100 staters, 2, 7; of 200 gold solidi, 6; _Italica_ of 20 Roman ounces, 14, 491; _Attica_ of 16 Roman ounces, 16, 233

_Mundbryce_ or _mundbyrd_ of king, 346, 377, 451; of various classes, 377; in Kent, 346, 452, 460, 476, 481, 488

_Norse tribal custom_, 238-276; personal rett, 240; wergelds how reckoned and paid, 242-258; wergeld of the hauld odalman or typical freeman, 96; cows = 200 sol., 259; gradations in rank, 260-270; the leysing or freedman, 261-267; odal-sharers of odal land, 271-276, 284, 504, 508

_North peoples_ law, fragments of, 360-369; wergelds in thrymsas (of 3_d._), 363; wergeld of ‘hold’ double that of Saxon thane, 363

_Nova Moneta_ of Charlemagne, 11, 179-193, and see ‘Currency’

_Ordeal_ in absence of oaths of kinsmen, 166, 403, 413, 499; under Frisian law, 203-205

_Ore_ or ounce of 20_d._; Merovingian = Roman ounce of 20 silver tremisses of 28·8 w.g. (1/12 lb. of 6912 w.g.), 10; and so also Kentish scilling, 443-455; Charlemagne’s and later Anglo-Saxon and Norman ore of 20 pence of 32 w.g. (1/12 lb. of 7680 w.g.), 11-13

_Ore_, Cnut’s of 16_d._ (1/15 Anglo-Saxon lb.), 306, 341; divided by him into 20 smaller pence, 343; used in Laws of Bretts and Scots, 306

_Ore_, Norse, of three _ortugs_ = 1/12 of Roman lb. 6912 w.g., 234-237

_Ortug_, of Scandinavia, ⅓ ounce = Greek stater, 233. See ‘Ore’

_Ox_ as currency, 1, 2; value of, see ‘Animals’

_Parage_, tenancy in, 513, 525

_Pound_, Roman of 6912 w.g., 8, 11, 18; Charlemagne’s of 7680 w.g., 11, 18; Anglo-Saxon and Norman of 7680 w.g., 12; Northern lb. of two marks, 234

_Ratio between gold and silver_: Norse of 1:8, 238; Merovingian 1:10, 185; Imperial, 1:12, 11; Charlemagne’s (attempted), 1:4, 11, 189; restored Frankish, 1:12, 11, 191; Cymric, 1:12, 49; Irish, 98; Bretts and Scots, 1:8, 307

_Romanus possessor_, half wergeld of, 149, 167; his _res propria_, 158, 162

_Saxon Laws_ (Lex Saxonum), 213-228; wergeld of liber 160 sol., 214; wergeld stated in silver, 214; gold solidus of 2 tremisses or bullock, 217

_Scæt._ See ‘Currency’

_Scanian tribal custom._ The _lex Scania antiqua_, family holdings, 276-288; Scanian wergeld, 291; Scanian and Lombardic custom compared, 292-296

_Scilling._ See ‘Currency’

_Scotland_, tribal custom in ancient laws of, 297-302; the _Regiam Majestatem_, 302-307; _Leges inter Brettos et Scotos_, 307-318; wergeld of thane 100 cows, 314; rules of kindred, 318, 320

_Siclus_, silver didrachma or ¼ oz. of Roman currency, see ‘Currency’

_Six-hynde class_, 371, 392, 397

_Soc and sac_, 330, 348

_Sochemen_ in Danelaga, 331-332, 522; their services, 332 _note_

_Solidus_ (gold) of Constantine of three tremisses, 7, 9; of Merovingian kings, 10; of Frisian custom (2 and 2½ tremisses), 197; of Saxon (2 tremisses), 217; (silver) of Charlemagne ‘nova moneta,’ see ‘Currency’

_Strangers in blood_, how treated under Cymric custom, 50-54; under Irish custom, 90; their rights increase with growth of kindred, 51, 90; their half wergeld, 401-403; galanas and wergeld of, without kindred, goes to the lord, 54, 478; ordeal instead of oaths, 166, 403

_Thane_ = twelve-hyndeman, 325; might rise to be an eorl, 368. See ‘King’s Thane’

_Thrymsa_, Northumbrian unit of currency = 3_d._, 362-366

_Twelve-hynde and Twy-hynde_, 406-416; _hyndens_ of oath-helpers, 409; full kindred twelve hyndens of oath-helpers, 409-411; twy-hynde class, originally the kinless class, as freedmen, 412, 500; steps to higher grade, 365-369, 502

_Werborh_ (wereplegium), 328, 358, and see ‘Hyndens’

_Wergeld_, death-fine in substitution for blood feud between kindreds, see ‘Beowulf,’ and 150; liability of kindred for, see ‘Kindred;’ normal of 100 head of cattle or gold mina, 3; of 200 gold solidi, 6, 49, 163, 171, 225, 229, 231, 233, 314; of 160 gold solidi, 1, 167, 172, 214, 232; Wessex and Mercian and Kentish wergelds compared with Continental wergelds, 436-439; of various tribes, see names of tribes; of clergy, 170, 177, 382

_Wife_, see ‘Marriage’

_Wilisc_, _Wealisc_, _Wealh_, non-Anglo-Saxon people, 364-5; with five hides to King’s utware, six hynde, 397; Gallo-Roman _Wala_, 398; _Wallerwente_ of Yorkshire, 399; with half wergelds, 401-403; _wealh_ gafolgelda, 404; Servus Waliscus 333; Wilisc witetheow, 404; theow-wealh, 405

_Wisigothic Laws_, 126-130; Roman influence on, 527

_Yardlands_ of gafolgeldas and geburs, 393, 422 _et seq._; single succession to, 517-521

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