If it were suggested that the _pretium hominis_ of seven ancillæ might be an ecclesiastical invention originating with the missionary churches of the Armorican districts of Gaul, we should still have to inquire why these churches differed so much from other Gallic churches. Everywhere else the Church, finding it impossible to get rid of a deep-rooted custom, seems to have made compacts with the secular power, adopting the customary system of wergelds prevalent in each of the conquered and converted tribes, and giving to the several grades in the ecclesiastical hierarchy graduated wergelds placing them on a level with corresponding classes of tribesmen or laymen. Even in these Celtic Canons the clerical instinct, whilst apparently adopting the fixed wergeld or coirp-dire for laymen, claimed for the clergy a graduated wergeld. The bishop, as we have seen according to the canons, claimed a sevenfold _pretium hominis_--seven times the price of seven ancillæ--because of his rank in the clerical hierarchy. He claimed too the _honour-price_ of seven ancillæ--the same as that of the Irish chieftain of a district for breach of his protection or precinct. The bishop seems to place himself here as elsewhere in these matters, on a level with the secular prince or even with the king. And again, if St. Patrick in his ‘Confessions’ (a work the authenticity of which is generally accepted) could use, as he did, the _pretium hominis_ as a well-known unit of payment, it would seem that at least as early as the end of the fifth century the value of the _pretium hominis_ as a unit of payment was perfectly well understood. And this in itself is a proof of further antiquity. The redeeming of baptized captives from slavery was moreover a recognised method of increasing the number of converts to the Christian Faith. In his equally authentic Epistle to the subjects of Coroticus St. Patrick speaks of the Roman and Gallic custom of Christians to send holy and fit men to the Franks and other nations with so many thousands of solidi for redeeming baptized captives, while Coroticus was killing and selling captives to a foreign people ignorant of God. Mr. Whitley Stokes, in editing this letter, suggests that this passage points to a date before the conversion of the Franks (A.D. 496).[92] The traffic in captives and slaves, and their sale perhaps into a still pagan corner of France, accords with the strangely local use of the _ancilla_ as the unit of payment as well in the Canons as in the Brehon Laws. What, then, are we to make of this fixed wergeld of seven ancillæ? So far, we find it prevalent only in Ireland and in the Goidelic or non-Cymric districts of South Wales and Brittany. And the evidence seems to carry it back to the fifth century. VII. THE WERGELD OF ANCIENT GALLIC CUSTOM. THE EVIDENCE OF CÆSAR. [Sidenote: Cæsar does not state the amount of the Gallic wergeld, but the Druids had jurisdiction in cases of homicide.]