Theft was to be paid for ninefold with four solidi pro fredo.
The further clauses regarding theft in this border district of forests and cattle and mixed population are not quite easily understood, nor need we dwell upon them.
In c. XXX. the penalty for letting a thief go without bringing him before the Comes or centenarius was 60 solidi, as in the Ripuarian Laws.
VI. CONCLUDING REMARKS.
Before passing from the laws, the compilation of which seems to date from the conquests of Charlemagne, it may be well to note that, regarded from the point of view of the wergelds, the tribes whose customs have been examined in the last two sections seem to have belonged to the Frankish group with wergelds of 200 gold solidi, while on the other hand the Frisians and Saxons seem to have belonged to the other group with wergelds of 160 gold solidi.
This grouping of the tribes may not be exactly what might have been expected.
The two groups of tribes with wergelds of 200 and 160 solidi.
Geographically the Frankish group is sufficiently compact. The other is widely extended and scattered. Frisians and Saxons remain in their ancient homes. The Alamannic, Bavarian, and Burgundian tribes have wandered far away from theirs. But in their northern home they may have been once sufficiently contiguous to have shared many common customs and among them a common wergeld of 160 solidi.[172] Settled in their new quarters, the Rhine and its tributaries seem to have been the great highways of commercial intercourse and the connecting links between them. Immigrants from them all met as strangers (advenæ) in the Ripuarian district, and, as we have seen, we owe our knowledge of some of their wergelds very much to the recognition of them in the Ripuarian law.