It was accepted in the Laws of Ine as a fact existing and of common knowledge, with no mark upon it of novelty or innovation. The distinction was evidently ancient and radical, and yet the word ‘gesithcund’ is not met with in any later laws.
Mention of twelve-, six-, and twy-hynde classes.
Throughout the 76 clauses of the Laws of Ine only one makes direct mention of the division of classes into twelve-hynde and twy-hynde, the distinction so generally made in the later laws, and in this clause, as in King Alfred’s Laws, the six-hynde class also appears:—
Aet twy-hyndum were mon sceal sellan to mon-bot xxx scill. æt vi-hyndum lxxx scill. æt twelf-hyndum c.xx.
(70) With a twy-hyndeman’s wer shall be given as man-bot xxx scillings with a six-hynde’s lxxx scillings, [? lx s.], with a twelve-hynde’s cxx scillings.[249]
The man-bot was, as we have seen, the payment to a lord for the loss of his man.
There is an indirect mention of wergelds in s. 34, which states that any one who has been in a foray in which a man has been slain must prove himself innocent of the slaying and make bot for the foray according to the wergeld of the slain. If his wergeld be 200s. he must make bot with 50s., and the like justice was to be done with respect to the ‘dearer born.’
We may assume from this and the later evidence that already the wergeld of the twelve-hyndeman was 1200 scillings, and that of the twy-hyndeman 200 scillings, though in the Dooms of Ine this is not otherwise directly stated. The laws take it for granted that the amount of the wergelds was common knowledge, as in so many other cases.