VI. THE DIVISION OF CLASSES UNDER KENTISH CUSTOM.

We have now examined the Kentish laws especially regarding the amount of the wergelds and mund-byrds. Although we may not have arrived at absolute certainty, yet some light may have been thrown upon the important matter of the division of classes.

Mund-byrds of King, eorl, and ceorl.

So far as the amounts of the wergeld are concerned, the contrast was between the eorl and the freeman, the wergeld of the eorl being three times that of the freeman. But as regards the mund-byrd the contrast was between eorl and ceorl. The mund-byrds were:—

King	50	Kentish scillings
Eorl	12	”
Ceorl	6	”

There must evidently be either identity of meaning or much overlapping in the terms freeman and ceorl. Otherwise the ceorl would be without a wergeld and the freeman without a mund-byrd.

And yet, on the other hand, there was probably some reason why the particular words used were chosen in the several clauses, and to a certain extent it may not be far to seek.

The ceorl was a man with a household and flet and so had a mund-byrd.

So far as the word ceorl had a special sense, it meant the married man,[310] the husband with a homestead and household, like the North-country husbandman with his husbandland. In this special sense every ceorl may have been a freeman, but every freeman may not have been a ceorl. Hence in the clauses as regards mund-byrd the contrast is between the eorl and the ceorl. Both were men with homesteads and households. Unless they had persons under their ‘mund’ they could not have had corresponding mund-byrds. The freeman who did not happen to be a man with a homestead and household could have no mund-byrd, because he had no precinct within which his peace could be broken, and no household under his protection. But he could have a wergeld.

So, again, in the clauses quoted relating to injuries done to servants in the Laws of Ethelbert:—

14. If a man lie with an eorl’s birele, let him make bot with xii scillings.

16. If a man lie with a ceorl’s birele, let him make bot with vi scillings. If with a theow of the second class, l sceatts; if with one of the third class xxx sceatts.

25. If any one slay a ceorl’s hlafæta, let him pay bot with vi scillings.

The ceorl in this contrast is again a husbandman with a homestead and household and with bireles and theows and hlafætas under his roof or in his ‘ham.’ Wherever in the Kentish laws the word ‘ceorl’ is used in any other sense, I think the meaning is confined to that of the married man—the husband, as in the phrase ‘husband and wife.’

So regarded, the division for purposes of mund-byrd into eorlisc and ceorlisc classes was natural, and so also, for purposes of wergeld, was the distinction between eorl and freeman. As regards the wergeld, we may consider the terms ceorl and freeman as practically interchangeable, inasmuch as every ceorl was certainly a freeman, and the unmarried freeman was probably a cadet or member of the household of some eorlisc or ceorlisc man.

Continental society included everywhere, as we have seen, such classes as the Roman liti and liberti composed of strangers and freedmen who had not so far risen in the social scale as to have fully recognised rights of inheritance and whose wergeld never was of the same amount as that of the full freeman. It is in connection with such classes that the tribal distinction of blood came in. If for the full freeman we were to substitute the word tribesman, with all the background of hyndens of kinsmen to fight and to swear for him involved in the term, then from the same point of view we must expect to find in Kent, as everywhere else, strangers in blood below the tribesmen, like the aillts and alltuds and taeogs of the Cymric Codes, the fuidhirs of the Brehon Laws, if not the liberti and liti of the Gallo-Romans, or, perhaps still more nearly to the point, the leysing classes of the Norse Laws.

The Kentish freedman and læt resembled the Norse leysing.

We have already found incidental mention of the Kentish freedman. He cannot after enfranchisement have been classed as an esne or a theow. There would seem to be no other class mentioned to which he could belong, unless it might be that of the læts of Ethelbert’s Laws.

It is worth while, therefore, to recur to the single clause in Ethelbert’s Laws already quoted respecting the læts and to examine it more closely. Within the compass of its few words there may perhaps be found evidence connecting the status of the Kentish læt with what we have learned of the status and conditions of the Norse leysing.

26. If a man slay a læt of the best class, let him pay 80 scillings; if one of the second class, let him pay 60 scillings; of the third, let him pay 40 scillings.

The clause does not mention to whom the payments are to be made, whether to the læt himself or, as in the case of the freedman, to his late owner or lord. But the payments are not called leodgelds as are the wergelds of freemen.

Three classes in both cases.

Looking to the payments themselves they are graduated for three classes of læts. There were also, under Norse custom, three classes of leysings gradually growing by successive steps towards a higher grade of freedom as kindreds grew up around them and became more and more nearly perfect till at last the ninth generation from the first freedman became fully free. Why may not the three grades of Kentish læts have been doing the same?

Let us compare the amounts of the payments for the slaying of the three classes of Kentish læts with those for the three classes of Norse leysings.

We have seen over and over again that the Kentish scilling regarded as twenty sceatts was an ore or a Roman ounce of silver. Therefore the Kentish payments, stated in ounces of silver, were as follows:—

Best class of læt	80	ounces of silver
Second class	60	” ”
Third class	40	” ”

The Norse ore was also in wheat-grains a Roman ounce of silver. The wergelds of the three classes of leysings in the Norse laws were as under:—

Frialsgiafi or newly made freedman	40	ores of silver
Leysing after making ‘freedom ale’	60	” ”
Leysinjia-son or highest rank of leysing whose great-grandfather was a leysing [311]	80	” ”

And the wergelds similar.

So that the wergelds of the three classes of Kentish læts corresponded exactly in amount with those of the three classes of Norse leysings, when reckoned both in silver.

We may further compare these payments for the Kentish læts with those for the freedman of the nearly contemporary Bavarian laws. They are stated in gold solidi of three tremisses, and the Kentish solidus was of only two tremisses. We have seen that the Bavarian freedman was paid for with forty solidi, i.e. sixty Kentish scillings. The payment thus corresponded with that for the Kentish læt of the second class.

The grades the result of growth of kindred.

These correspondences are unexpected and very significant, but the significance is made still more important by the clause in the Laws of Wihtræd describing the position of the newly made freedman under Kentish custom. The description of his position might almost be taken as a description of the ‘frialgiafi’ or newly made leysing of the Norse laws. Under Kentish law the freedman was to be folkfree, but ‘the freedom-giver was to keep the heritage and wergeld and mund of his family, be he over the march wherever he will.’ This was, as we have seen, almost exactly the position of the Norse leysing before he had made his freedom ale. He had as yet no kindred to swear and to fight for him. He was still under the mund and protection of his lord. His descendants could only obtain the protection of a kindred and become wholly free from the thyrmsl of the lord, when in the course of generations a kindred had grown up gradually around them.

So too, as we have seen, under the Bavarian laws the freedman’s wergeld went to his lord.[312] Under the Frisian law the wergeld of the litus went to his lord.[313] Under Ripuarian law even the ‘homo denarialis’—the freedman who became a Frank with a full wergeld—was recognised as having at first no kindred. If he had no children, his property went to the fisc. And it was not till the third generation that his descendants had full rights of inheritance.[314] We have already found abundant evidence of the continued force of tribal custom and tribal instincts in regard to the importance of kindred while considering the meaning and function of the hyndens in connection with the twelve-hynde and twy-hynde classes of the Anglo-Saxon laws. These remarkable correspondences between the position held by the læts in Kent and that of the leysings and freedmen and liti of the Continental laws, without our making too much of them, may fairly be taken as additional evidence of the tenacity of tribal custom in these matters.[315]