This was not the first time that the difficulty of absence of kindred had occurred and been formally recognised in England. The early Danish conquests had made special provisions necessary for the protection of the kinless stranger. And it was declared that ‘if any one did wrong to an ecclesiastic or a foreigner as to money or as to life, then should the king or the eorl there in the land and the bishop of the people be unto him in the place of a kinsman and of a protector (for _moeg_ and for _mund-boran_) unless he had another.’[210] Again, as regards the position of the maternal relations and the _congildones_ of a stranger, it is clear that the writer of these so-called laws is copying and adopting what he finds in the Laws of King Alfred. In ss. 27 and 28 of the latter, in the absence of relatives the _gegildas_ of the slayer were to pay half the wergeld; and also, in the absence of relatives of the slain person, his _gegildas_ were to receive half the wergeld. In both cases an artificial group of organised comrades, ‘gegildas’ or ‘congildones,’ seems to have been recognised as in part taking the place of kindred. And the importance of the provision of some such substitute for protection by the oaths of kinsmen is evident enough when it is considered that the ordeal of hot iron or water was the recognised alternative. On the whole the clauses in these so-called laws relating to Normans and strangers adhere to the principle of the liability of kindred both paternal and maternal in cases of homicide, and this is the more remarkable because long before, especially in the Laws of Edmund, as will hereafter appear, a very strong tendency had been shown to restrict the liability in case of homicide to the slayer himself. In the meantime the attempt to apply the Anglo-Saxon custom as to wergelds to Normans after the Conquest, taken together with the continued recognition of the liability of both paternal and maternal _parentes_, is a very strong proof that the solidarity of the kindred was not altogether a thing of the past. Tribal custom which at the Norman Conquest could be applied to the conquering class cannot be regarded as dead. II. NORMAN VIEW OF WESSEX CUSTOM. We pass on now to clause LXX. of the ‘Laws of Henry I.’ with the heading ‘Consuetudo Westsexe.’ [Sidenote: Wessex wergeld of twyhynde or villanus and twelve-hynde or thane.] The amount of the wergeld according to Wessex law is thus stated:-- In Westsexa, que caput regni est et legum, twihindi, i. villani wera est iiii lib.; twelfhindi, i. thaini xxv lib. (lxx. i) In Wessex, which is the capital of the kingdom and of laws, the wer of the twyhyndeman, _i.e._ of the villanus, is four pounds; of the twelvehyndeman, _i.e._ of the thane, twenty-five pounds.