In the payment of all debts _according to ancient custom_ the solidi shall be paid by 12 denarii throughout Salic Law, except in the case of wergelds, if a Saxon or Frisian shall kill a Salic Frank let the solidus be paid by 40 denarii. Among Salic Franks, however, on both sides as to all debts, as we have said, 12 denarii shall be paid for the solidus, whether in the case of homicides or anything else. As between Salic Franks, therefore, the solidus of 12 denarii was to be legal tender in payment of wergelds and everything else. [Sidenote: The _nova moneta_ enforced by penalties.] This was all very well for debtors, but it was not so satisfactory to creditors. The exception that, when a Frank was killed by a Saxon or a Frisian, the wergeld was still to be paid in the solidus of 40 denarii, was an admission that to receive it in solidi of 12 denarii would have been a hardship. And as to the general public, the acceptance of payment of debts in the denarii of the nova moneta had to be secured by penalties. A clause was introduced into the Capitulare of A.D. 794[146] according to which freemen refusing the new denarii were to be fined 15 solidi; whilst servi refusing them were to be publicly beaten naked at a post. [Sidenote: And it became permanent and was adopted by Offa and Alfred.] The permanent result was very remarkable. The new currency was maintained as legal tender in France, and the gold currency practically disappeared. Charlemagne and his successors coined very few more gold solidi and tremisses. King Offa and after him Alfred raised the English sceat to the penny of 32 wheat-grains, probably in imitation of the nova moneta, and Charlemagne’s pound of 240 of these pence--_i.e._ of 7680 wheat-grains of silver--became generally recognised as the pound of monetary reckoning in Western Europe. [Sidenote: But the ratio between gold and silver went back to 1:12.] So far Charlemagne triumphed. But in the meantime the artificial ratio of 1:4, sought to be established between gold and silver, could not be maintained. The pound of silver remained the standard in accounts, but one of Charlemagne’s successors restored the Imperial ratio of 1:12 and enacted that the pound of pure gold should no longer be sold at any other price than 12 pounds of silver. The date of the edict by which this restoration of the old ratio was secured was A.D. 864.[147] These were the changes in the currency which took place during the period of the formation of the Lex Frisionum and Lex Saxonum which we have next to examine.