Thus in England, as elsewhere, we may easily believe that the gulf between classes resulting from tribal instincts and confirmed by difference in wergelds was hardened and widened by the conditions of landholding in the conquered country, which tended to raise the one class more and more into manorial lords and depress the other into more or less servile tenants. The Compact between Alfred and Guthrum affords the strongest evidence that already in King Alfred’s time the process was far enough advanced for a pretty hard line to be drawn between them. VII. COMPARISON OF WESSEX AND MERCIAN WERGELDS WITH THOSE OF CONTINENTAL TRIBES. Before passing from the Wessex to the Kentish laws it may be well to mark the position to which the evidence hitherto examined has brought us with regard to the amount of the wergelds. [Sidenote: Continental wergelds of 200 and 160 gold solidi for the full freeman.] We have had again and again to come back to the question of the status of the twelve-hynde and twy-hynde classes as shown by their wergelds. By the Compact between King Alfred and Guthrum the English wergelds were brought into line with Norse and other Continental wergelds. The statement of the higher wergeld in gold made possible a comparison of the Anglo-Saxon with Continental wergelds. The result of the inquiry into the Continental wergelds of the full freeman was that they seemed to fall very distinctly into two classes--the Frankish and Norse wergeld of 200 gold solidi, on the one hand, and the Frisian, Saxon, Alamannic, Bavarian, and possibly Burgundian wergeld of 160 gold solidi on the other hand. The ratio between these two wergelds is as 5:4. Now, this is exactly the ratio between the two twelve-hynde wergelds of the Anglo-Saxon laws, _i.e._ of Wessex and of Mercia. Both were of 1200 scillings, but the Wessex scilling was of five pence and the Mercian of four pence. [Sidenote: The Wessex and Mercian wergelds ancient.] Finding twelve-hynde and twy-hynde wergelds in the Laws of Ine, we seem to be bound to regard the distinctions between the two classes as going back to a time two centuries at least before the inroads of the Northmen.