Adhering, then, to the meaning of _hynden_ as the set of oath-helpers, we have next to keep in mind that the oath-helpers were naturally kinsmen representing the slayer’s kindred and their responsibility for the wergeld of the person slain if their kinsman was the slayer, and by this consideration we are once more thrown back upon tribal custom. [Sidenote: The twy-hyndeman and leysing’s want of kindred.] And when in the Compact between Alfred and Guthrum we see the ‘ceorl who sits on gafol-land’ put in the same position as the Norse ‘leysing’ or newly made freeman whose kindred was imperfect, howbeit in course of being widened by each generation, we seem again to be put upon the scent that the twy-hynde condition of the Saxon ceorl may also originally have had something to do with his imperfect kindred. When further, in the remarkable fragment already quoted, we see the Saxon ceorl himself rising in the social scale, getting land ‘to the King’s utware,’ having a ‘coat of mail, helmet, and over-gilded sword’ and doing direct service to the King, until at last, his son’s son having had that land in succession, the great-grandchildren become of _sithcund_ kin with twelve-hynde wergelds, the scent seems to lie all the more strongly in the direction of the tribal rules of kindred. For it is as though we had watched the process of the growth of kindred in this case till the _sithcund_ condition was reached, and the full hynden had been produced, thus raising the twy-hynde into a twelve-hynde man. The leysing, we learned from the Norse laws, being a newly made freedman, had at first no freeborn kin from whom he could inherit or who could inherit from him. He had no one of his kin to swear for him or to fight for him till he had sons and grandsons. For three generations the descendants were leysings still. And though during that time kinsmen enough may have grown up around them to swear for them yet still their oaths may well have been reckoned of lower value than those of the hauld, each of whose oath-helpers had a full kindred behind him to support him. It took another three generations to put the leysing in this position. [Sidenote: The full oath of a man with 12 oath-helpers of full kindred twelve-hynde.] There may, then, perhaps be involved in this matter of imperfect and perfect kindred a principle of tribal custom originally underlying the terms twelve-hynde and twy-hynde. The oath of full value under tribal usage would be the oath of a man with a full kindred, _i.e._ with twelve hyndens, each of full kindred, behind him. Only with a full kindred to support him was his protection complete, because without it he could not secure a full oath of twelve sufficiently influential and powerful oath-helpers. If he could claim from his kindred such an oath, then he may well have been considered properly a twelve-hyndeman, because such an oath meant practically that he had the support and protection of twelve hyndens of kinsmen in case of need.