In framing new laws representing the old customs of the newly conquered Frisians and Saxons, the question would certainly arise whether the wergelds were to be stated in the equivalent of their old customary value in cattle, or reduced to one third of their old value by retaining the traditional number of solidi as if they were still of the gold value.
We have seen that Frisians and Saxons were exceptionally dealt with; but they had now become a part of the Empire, and, with the best intentions, how was the framer of their laws to describe their ancient wergelds which had hitherto been paid in gold solidi or in cattle? No one of the courses open to him would be without its difficulties.
He might record the customary wergeld as still to be paid in gold solidi; in which case the wergeld would be three times that of neighbouring tribes who could now pay their wergelds in silver.
Or he might divide the amount of the ancient wergeld by three, so as to reduce it to the lower level; in which case the number of animals in which by long custom the wergeld had been paid would be worth three times the wergeld payable in gold.
These would be the alternatives if the payment in gold were continued, and never as yet in any of the laws had the wergelds been stated otherwise than in gold.
There was only one other way open to the legislator, if he wished to keep up the old customary values, viz. to translate the gold values at the old ratio into the new silver solidi: that is, to treble the gold figures of the ancient customary wergelds and make them payable in silver solidi. This would probably be the best course if he wished to continue the old relation of the wergelds to the animals in which they had hitherto been mostly paid. But then it might be difficult to enforce the payment of wergelds in silver in districts where the currency was still gold.
The legislator would, in any case, have to make up his mind whether to lower the ancient wergelds of the newly conquered tribes to a third of what they had been, or to keep up the value of the wergelds and the number of cattle in which they had from time immemorial been paid.
The wergeld in the popular tribal mind was a thing so fixed and so sacred that the makers of the Lex Frisionum and the Lex Saxonum were almost certain to find themselves between the horns of a dilemma.
II. THE LEX FRISIONUM.
The tribes conquered by Charlemagne, whose laws we have now to examine, differed from those whose laws and wergelds have been already considered in one important particular. They were not conquering tribes which had migrated into districts already under Roman law.