These would be the alternatives if the payment in gold were continued, and never as yet in any of the laws had the wergelds been stated otherwise than in gold. There was only one other way open to the legislator, if he wished to keep up the old customary values, viz. to translate the gold values at the old ratio into the new silver solidi: that is, to treble the gold figures of the ancient customary wergelds and make them payable in silver solidi. This would probably be the best course if he wished to continue the old relation of the wergelds to the animals in which they had hitherto been mostly paid. But then it might be difficult to enforce the payment of wergelds in silver in districts where the currency was still gold. The legislator would, in any case, have to make up his mind whether to lower the ancient wergelds of the newly conquered tribes to a third of what they had been, or to keep up the value of the wergelds and the number of cattle in which they had from time immemorial been paid. The wergeld in the popular tribal mind was a thing so fixed and so sacred that the makers of the Lex Frisionum and the Lex Saxonum were almost certain to find themselves between the horns of a dilemma. II. THE LEX FRISIONUM. The tribes conquered by Charlemagne, whose laws we have now to examine, differed from those whose laws and wergelds have been already considered in one important particular. They were not conquering tribes which had migrated into districts already under Roman law. The conquests of Charlemagne over the Frisians and Saxons were conquests of German tribes settled as of old in their own countries. They were, moreover, conquests of still pagan tribes by Christian and partly Romanised Franks. Frankish conquest had extended far into Frisian and Westphalian territory under the Merovingian kings. In Frisia Frankish influence was shown by the existence of Merovingian mints at Duurstede.[148] In Westphalia, at Soest and Paderborn, there were already Christian churches under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Cologne. But neither the conquest nor the conversion was completed till the time of Charlemagne. [Sidenote: Was the wergeld 160 solidi?] We have already learned from Titles XXXI. and XXXVI. of the Ripuarian law that there were Frisians as well as Saxons, Burgundians, Alamanni, and Bavarians resident in the Ripuarian district. Moreover, it was directly stated that these immigrants were to be judged, not by Ripuarian law, but by their own law and custom. Further, being often isolated and without kindred near them to swear for them, if charged with crime they were to clear themselves by the ordeal of fire or lot. And finally their wergeld was stated to be 160 solidi, the inference being that this was the wergeld of the Frisian freeman in his own country, by the law and custom of which he was to be judged.