The twy-hyndeman and leysing’s want of kindred.
And when in the Compact between Alfred and Guthrum we see the ‘ceorl who sits on gafol-land’ put in the same position as the Norse ‘leysing’ or newly made freeman whose kindred was imperfect, howbeit in course of being widened by each generation, we seem again to be put upon the scent that the twy-hynde condition of the Saxon ceorl may also originally have had something to do with his imperfect kindred.
When further, in the remarkable fragment already quoted, we see the Saxon ceorl himself rising in the social scale, getting land ‘to the King’s utware,’ having a ‘coat of mail, helmet, and over-gilded sword’ and doing direct service to the King, until at last, his son’s son having had that land in succession, the great-grandchildren become of sithcund kin with twelve-hynde wergelds, the scent seems to lie all the more strongly in the direction of the tribal rules of kindred. For it is as though we had watched the process of the growth of kindred in this case till the sithcund condition was reached, and the full hynden had been produced, thus raising the twy-hynde into a twelve-hynde man.
The leysing, we learned from the Norse laws, being a newly made freedman, had at first no freeborn kin from whom he could inherit or who could inherit from him. He had no one of his kin to swear for him or to fight for him till he had sons and grandsons. For three generations the descendants were leysings still. And though during that time kinsmen enough may have grown up around them to swear for them yet still their oaths may well have been reckoned of lower value than those of the hauld, each of whose oath-helpers had a full kindred behind him to support him. It took another three generations to put the leysing in this position.
The full oath of a man with 12 oath-helpers of full kindred twelve-hynde.
There may, then, perhaps be involved in this matter of imperfect and perfect kindred a principle of tribal custom originally underlying the terms twelve-hynde and twy-hynde. The oath of full value under tribal usage would be the oath of a man with a full kindred, i.e. with twelve hyndens, each of full kindred, behind him. Only with a full kindred to support him was his protection complete, because without it he could not secure a full oath of twelve sufficiently influential and powerful oath-helpers. If he could claim from his kindred such an oath, then he may well have been considered properly a twelve-hyndeman, because such an oath meant practically that he had the support and protection of twelve hyndens of kinsmen in case of need.
This might at first sight seem an unnecessarily large requirement if the oath were regarded only as clearing a man from the charge of man-slaying. But going back to tribal usage it seems no longer too large when the alternative is considered. The alternative was the ordeal and, on failure of the test of innocence, the feud or the payment of a wergeld of, as we have seen, normally one hundred head of cattle. In either case the slayer was powerless if alone. He was powerful only in having a full kindred behind him bound by ties of kinship and tribal usage first to swear for him instead of his being put to the ordeal, and secondly to fight for him or to assist him in finding the hundred head of cattle required to buy off the feud, according to the proverb ‘Buy off the spear or bear it.’ In either case the completeness of his kindred was the measure of the power of protection behind him.
The oath of the ceorl worth only one sixth of that of the twelve-hyndeman and thus only twy-hynde.
The twy-hyndeman considered as the leysing or freedman would not be in this strong position. His social status, resulting from his imperfect kindred, must be a low one. If he slew a twelve-hyndeman, from the point of view of the feud he would be helpless. The kindred of the twelve-hyndeman slain by him could not be satisfied merely by the slaughter of an inferior. Tribal custom of the Continental Saxons allowed vengeance for homicide by a thrall to be taken upon seven thralls. Under Mercian usage, as we have seen, it had been settled that the oath of the ceorl was to be taken as worth one sixth of that of the twelve-hyndeman, because the life of six ceorls was held to be equivalent in the matter of vengeance to that of one twelve-hyndeman. And thus it may be that, in the case of man-slaying, his oath and that of his oath-helpers, all of inferior value, came, under Anglo-Saxon custom, to be reckoned in comparison with that of the man of full kindred as worth only ‘two hyndens’ as against his twelve.
In the other passage in which the word ‘hynden’ occurs it has not so distinctly the meaning of ‘oath-helpers.’ It is not used in relation to homicide or wergelds, but still its use and its meaning are instructive.