[Sidenote: The twy-hynde class was the dependent class of gafolgeldas, with a lower wergeld.] It might at first sight be supposed that this twy-hynde condition of the dependent class in England, so far as it may have included Anglo-Saxons, must have been the result of degradation in social status between the first settlements and the time of King Alfred, but we have sought in vain for evidence of an earlier higher position in the Laws of King Ine. And, on the whole, even when regarded solely from a tribal point of view, it does not seem unlikely that strangers in blood and freedmen and dependent followers of the conquering chieftains should find themselves after conquest and settlement in the economic condition of tenants and gafolgeldas on the lands of protecting lords. Nor would it be strange that, when in a new country and under other influences this uniform dependent economic condition had once become a general fact, the whole class, in spite of variety of origins, should find itself marked by a twy-hynde wergeld. [Sidenote: The twy-hynde class were equated.] It does not follow, however, that because in the compact between Alfred and Guthrum the twy-hynde class were reckoned as equally dear with the Norse leysing that the Anglo-Saxon ‘ceorl who sits on gafol-land’ was generally in as low a social position as the Norse newly made freedman. It is enough that according to the evidence, he was a dependent tenant, let us say, under the lordship of a twelve-hynde man or if settled upon royal demesne of some gesith or official of the king. [Sidenote: With the Norse leysing.] Still it may be well to look once again at the position of the Norse leysing, because, after all, it is with the leysing that the Anglo-Saxon twy-hynde gafolgelda was equated in a compact made after King Alfred’s victory, and so when the two chieftains seemed to be treating on equal terms. Surely King Alfred was not intending to degrade the Anglo-Saxon dependent class. Presumably he was making a good bargain for them. [Sidenote: The low condition of the leysing.]