The said orders according to their grade of promotion shall have power of protestation. The priest to the number of cxx tributarii; the deacon up to the number of lx ‘_manentes_;’ the monk to the number ‘xxx tributarii,’ _i.e._ in a criminal cause. But if the dispute has arisen about the boundaries of lands it shall be lawful to the priest on attestation of his oath to transfer, into the right of the church, land, _i.e._ of one _tributarius_. To two deacons also the same is conceded. Let attestation of three monks suffice for the same. Now, it seems very unlikely that such a question as this about the value of oaths should be asked of the Archbishop if it had already been settled by law in Northumbria. And so we seem to see him here making a claim and laying down a principle for the first time in Northumbria the following of which resulted in his priests being put upon a par with the secular thane as regards the value of their oaths. [Sidenote: In Mercia priest’s oath of same value as that of the thane.] The principle that one man’s oath was worth more than another’s we have seen already stated in the undated fragment on ‘Mercian oaths,’ which very possibly represented ancient tradition. A twelve-hynde oath stands for six ceorls’ oaths, because if a man should avenge a twelve-hyndeman he will be fully avenged on six ceorls and his wergeld will be six ceorls’ wergelds (p. 360). And, further, the right of the priest to be put on equal footing with the thane we have seen recognised in another fragment. A mass priest’s oath and a secular thane’s are in English law reckoned of equal value, and by reason of the seven church degrees that the mass priest through grace of God has acquired, he is worthy of thane-right (p. 361). The same principle was recognised in the further fragment on the North People’s wergelds. The usual statement in Continental and Anglo-Saxon laws as regards compurgation is that a man must clear himself by his oath and the oaths of so many oath-helpers. But in the Laws of Ine, with which the Archbishop was doubtless conversant, another method was followed in some cases. A man must clear himself, not with the oaths of so many oath-helpers, but with an oath of so many _hides_. The claim of the Archbishop seems to favour the view, suggested but hardly established by various passages in the Laws of Ine, that the twelve-hyndeman’s oath was reckoned at 120 hides.[246] [Sidenote: Oaths of so many hides.]