Tribal Custom in Anglo-Saxon Law: Being an Essay Supplemental to (1) 'The English Village Community', (2) 'The Tribal System in Wales'Seebohm, Frederic
History
Tribal Custom in Anglo-Saxon Law: Being an Essay Supplemental to (1) 'The English Village Community', (2) 'The Tribal System in Wales'
Seebohm, Frederic
Anglo-Saxons; Law, Anglo-Saxon; Law, Medieval; Tribes -- Great Britain
And hi cwædon, gyf mon ofslægen wurðe, eal we letað efen dyrne,
Engliscne ⁊ Denisce. ꝥ is to .viii. healf-marcum asodenes goldes.
buton þam ceorle þe on gafol-lande sit ⁊ heora lysingon: þa
syndon eac efen dyre. ægðer twa hund scyll::
And they ordained, if a man should be slain we estimate all
equally dear, English and Danish, _i.e._ at viii half-marks of
pure gold except the ceorl who sits on gafol land and their
[the Danish] lysings, they also are equally dear, either at 200
scillings.
And gyf man cynges þegen beteo man-slihtas. ⁊ he hine ladian
durre. do he ꝥ mid xii cynges þegnas ⁊ gyf mon þone man betyhð þe
bið læssa maga. ladie hine xi his gelicena ⁊ anum cyninges þegene.
And if a man accuse a king’s thane of manslaying and he dare to
clear himself, let him do that with 12 king’s thanes, and if any
one accuse that man who is of less degree let him clear himself
with 11 of his equals and with one king’s thane.
Now, in the first place, it is evident that this text describes the
wergeld of two classes or ranks of persons.
Dane and Englishman of the first class are to be held equally dear at
eight half-marks of pure gold.
The other class embraces the Saxon ‘ceorl who sits on gafol land’ and the
Danish lysing. These also are equally dear at 200 scillings.
[Sidenote: Englishman put on a level with the Norse hauld, at the normal
wergeld of 200 gold solidi or 1200 scillings.]
Let us look at these two classes separately. The first class of Dane
and English _men_ without other definition are to be paid for by eight
half-marks of gold. The money is Danish. Eight half-marks contained
thirty-two ores. And this, as we have seen, at the Norse ratio of 1:8 was
the same thing as 32 marks of silver. The wergeld of the hauld of the
Gulathing law we found to be most probably 30 marks of silver. The Danish
_man_ of this clause thus seems to be represented in Norse law by the
hauld. In other words, Guthrum from his point of view took the hauld as
the typical freeman, just as we found him so taken in the Gulathing law.
It will be remembered that this wergeld of the hauld was equated with 96
cows and that in its gold value reckoned in wheat-grains it amounted to
200 Merovingian gold solidi.
From the English point of view it was not far otherwise. The
twelve-hyndeman with a wergeld of 1200 scillings was evidently the
typical freeman Alfred had in view. 1200 Mercian scillings of four pence,
_i.e._ 4800 pence, at the Norse ratio of 1:8 equalled 600 gold tremisses
or 200 gold solidi. 1200 Wessex scillings of five pence at a ratio of
1:10 would also equal 200 gold solidi.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account