[Sidenote: Kentish clauses meant to modify the previous rule: which may have been the half-wergeld of 300 and 100 scillings.] Returning to the Kentish clauses and assuming that their direct intention was to modify previous custom, we are now in a position fairly to judge what the _previous_ rule may have been. Reasoning from the analogy of other laws, it seems most likely to have been to make the owner pay a half-wergeld of the person slain and hand over the esne for the other half--the stage of custom reached in the Ripuarian Laws and Salic Laws of Codex I. And if this were in fact the former custom previous to the enactment in these clauses, then without departing from the correct literal reading of the text it may be that the words in the parenthesis in each clause may refer, not to the eorlcundman’s or the freeman’s wergild--the word ‘_leod_-geldi’ is not used--but to the amount hitherto payable in the particular case of a man slain by an esne. The 300 and 100 scillings may be the _half_-wergeld hitherto payable, instead of which thenceforth the owner of the esne is to pay three manworths or one manworth in addition to handing over the esne. If previous to the innovation the eorlcundman had been paid for in such a case with three hundred shillings and the freeman with one hundred, the words in their strictly correct literal meaning might perhaps rightly be read thus:-- If any one’s esne slay an eorlcundman, one who _is_ [now] paid for at three hundred scillings, let the owner [in future] give up the slayer and add _three_ manworths [of the esne] thereto. If anyone’s esne slay a freeman, one who _is_ [now] paid for at _one_ hundred scillings, let the owner [in future] give up the slayer and add one manworth [of the esne] thereto. This reading of the clauses, putting emphasis upon what is _now_ the gild (þane ꝥ sie)--the _three_ and the _one_ hundred scillings--in contrast with what the owner has in future to do, _i.e._ pay _three_ manworths and _one_ manworth instead of the _three_ hundred and _one_ hundred scillings in addition to the handing over of the esne--seems to me more than any other rendering to account for the insertion of the parenthesis stating the amounts payable for the eorlcundman and freeman. If the word _leod-gylde_ had been used it might have been different. But I am informed on the best authority that the words _gylde_ and _gelde_ in the two clauses are not substantives but used in an adjectival sense, and in this case they would apply to a half-wergeld payable as correctly as to a whole one. [Sidenote: Was 100 scillings the half-wergeld and so the medume wergeld of King Ethelbert’s laws?]