Payment for the servus and libertus.
In Chapter L. of the Latin version the payment for a servus is fixed at three marks, and in Chapter LII. the payment for a libertus is fixed at half that of the freeborn man.
It is difficult to judge how far these are to be taken as the ancient wergelds of Scanian custom, or whether they had been altered in amount by changes in the currency or recent legislation.
The wergeld of 15 marks of silver is exactly half of that of the normal wergeld of the Norse hauld. And yet it does not seem likely that it had been reduced in amount by recent legislation when it is considered that under the Norse laws, as we have seen, the tendency seemed to be to add ‘sakauka’ to the ancient wergelds rather than decrease them.
It may be noted also that in a later addition[192] to the Danish version it is stated that ‘a man’s bot is 30 good marks and overbot 26 marks and 16 ortugs.’ And also in the ‘City Law’ of A.D. 1300 the wergeld is stated at 30 marks with an additional ‘overbot.’[193]
The Scanian wergeld perhaps that of the ‘bonde.’
We seem bound to consider the wergeld of the freeborn man under the ‘Lex Scania antiqua’ of the previous century as 15 marks of silver.
The explanation probably may be that the bonde and not the hauld was taken as the typical freeborn man.
When it is further considered that in the Danish version of the Scanian law there is no mention of the hauld, and that, as we have seen, the bonde seems to have been regarded as the ordinary householder or paterfamilias of the family holding, the inference becomes probably a fair one that the bonde was the typical ingenuus or freeborn man for the purpose of the wergelds.