Tribal Custom in Anglo-Saxon Law / Being an Essay Supplemental to (1) 'The English Village Community', (2) 'The Tribal System in Wales'

by Frederic Seebohm

(74) If a theow-wealh slay an Englishman, then he who owns him shall deliver him up to the lord and the kindred or give 60 scillings for his life. But if he will not give that sum for him, then must the lord enfranchise him. Afterwards let his kindred pay the wer if he have a free mæg-burh. If he have not let his foes take heed to him. The free need not pay ‘mæg-bot’ with the theow unless he be desirous to buy off from himself the feud: nor the ‘theow’ with the free.

This clause is repeated in the so-called Laws of Henry I. c. lxx., but the amount named is 40 scillings instead of 60 scillings. Sixty scillings is double the manbot of the twy-hynde man in s. 70 of Ine’s Laws, and it may be the double value of the wealh-theow to his lord.

V. THE TWELVE-HYNDE AND TWY-HYNDE MEN AND THEIR HYNDENS OF OATH-HELPERS.

The meaning of twelve-hynde and twy-hynde.

The silence of the Dooms of Ine upon some of the most important matters relating to ancient custom is no doubt disappointing, but their position as almost our only direct evidence of the customs of Wessex for the first two or three centuries after the conquest of Britain gives to every hint a value. Some of the clauses are so isolated that if we could not approach them with light from other sources we should lose the right clue to their meaning. It is only by following the course we have adopted of working backwards from the known to the unknown that we can rightly interpret some of the clauses by reading into them some things not directly mentioned by them.

And yet if we try to understand such a fundamental matter as the meaning of the division of classes into twelve-hynde and twy-hynde[257] it is to the Dooms of Ine that we must go.

Connected with the system of oath-helpers.

It is in these Dooms that the meaning of the words twelve-hynde and twy-hynde is most clearly connected with the system of compurgation and the oaths of the oath-helpers. It is moreover in these Dooms that at first sight the mystery is made still more mysterious by the statement of the value of the oaths in so many hides.