II. THE SCÆTTS AND SCILLINGS OF THE KENTISH LAWS 443 III. THE LAWS OF ETHELBERT 455 IV. THE LAWS OF HLOTHÆRE AND EADRIC, A.D. 685-6 467 V. THE LAWS OF KING WIHTRÆD, A.D. 690-696 476 VI. THE DIVISION OF CLASSES UNDER KENTISH CUSTOM 481 VII. THE AMOUNT OF THE KENTISH WERGELDS 487 VIII. RESULT OF THE KENTISH EVIDENCE 492 CHAPTER XV. _GENERAL CONCLUSIONS_ 496 INDEX 533 [Illustration] CHAPTER I. _THE CURRENCY IN WHICH WERGELDS WERE RECKONED AND PAID._ I. CONNECTION BETWEEN THE WERGELD OF 100 HEAD OF CATTLE AND THE MINA OF 100 GOLD STATERS. [Sidenote: The currencies in which wergelds were paid.] The inquiry pursued in this volume partakes so much of the character of a study of the wergelds of the various tribes of North-western Europe that it becomes necessary as briefly as possible to call attention at the outset to the currencies in which they were reckoned and paid. [Sidenote: Cows.] The Cymric galanas or death fine was reckoned in cows, and the cows were equated with silver. [Sidenote: Female slaves.] The Irish ‘eric’ of the Brehon laws was stated in _cumhals_ or female slaves, and lesser payments in cows and heifers, and these were all equated with silver. [Sidenote: Silver.] The Anglo-Saxon wergelds were stated, with perhaps one exception, in silver scillings. The wergelds of the Scandinavian tribes were generally stated in their laws in silver marks, ores, and ortugs, with the equivalent in gold at a ratio of 1:8, and also in cows. [Sidenote: Gold solidi.] Those of the Continental German tribes were generally stated in gold solidi, but the statements were sometimes supplemented by clauses describing the value of the animals, whether oxen or cows, in which the payments were, in practice, still evidently made, at the date of the laws. [Sidenote: Early equation between cattle and gold.] Professor Ridgeway[1] has shown that the equation between cattle and gold may go back a long way into the past of Eastern tradition. The result of his careful inquiry was the brilliant suggestion that the ox--the most usual unit of payment in agricultural countries--was very early and very generally equated in Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, and Greek usage with the gold stater or didrachma. [Sidenote: Greek stater the ox-unit.] The stater was reckoned in Greek usage as of 192 wheat-grains.[2] It was divided into 6 diobols of 32 wheat-grains. And throughout the East the usual multiples of the stater were the _light mina_ of 50 staters and the _heavy mina_ of 100 staters or 19,200 wheat-grains.[3]