The ceorlisc class would include newly made freedmen.
We must not infer that these two classes included strictly the whole population. Judging from Continental evidence, Wessex must have been very exceptional indeed if there were not everywhere numerous theows or thralls. From this class Anglo-Saxon wills and other documents show that there was a constant stream of freedmen or theows who by emancipation were allowed to creep up into the ceorlisc class, partly as the result of Christian impulse, and partly probably from the lack of tenants to occupy the yardlands left vacant by the desolation caused by constant wars.
Thus while, broadly speaking, the gesithcund and the ceorlisc classes may have corresponded to the twelve-hynde and twy-hynde classes, they were not absolutely identical. The two lines of distinction had not the same origin and did not run absolutely parallel. But they may well have worked in the same direction. The original distinction founded upon the possession or absence of the perfect kindred and ‘hyndens of oath-helpers’ was rooted in tribal instincts and never wholly extinguished throughout Anglo-Saxon history. The gesithcund class, most perfect in their kindred and nearest in their relation to the King, influenced perhaps by traditions of Roman land management, naturally grew up into a twelve-hynde and landed class, while the ceorlisc class, recruited from outside and from below, just as naturally became their tenants.
The gulf between the two classes existed in King Alfred’s time.
Thus in England, as elsewhere, we may easily believe that the gulf between classes resulting from tribal instincts and confirmed by difference in wergelds was hardened and widened by the conditions of landholding in the conquered country, which tended to raise the one class more and more into manorial lords and depress the other into more or less servile tenants. The Compact between Alfred and Guthrum affords the strongest evidence that already in King Alfred’s time the process was far enough advanced for a pretty hard line to be drawn between them.
VII. COMPARISON OF WESSEX AND MERCIAN WERGELDS WITH THOSE OF CONTINENTAL TRIBES.
Before passing from the Wessex to the Kentish laws it may be well to mark the position to which the evidence hitherto examined has brought us with regard to the amount of the wergelds.
Continental wergelds of 200 and 160 gold solidi for the full freeman.
We have had again and again to come back to the question of the status of the twelve-hynde and twy-hynde classes as shown by their wergelds. By the Compact between King Alfred and Guthrum the English wergelds were brought into line with Norse and other Continental wergelds. The statement of the higher wergeld in gold made possible a comparison of the Anglo-Saxon with Continental wergelds.
The result of the inquiry into the Continental wergelds of the full freeman was that they seemed to fall very distinctly into two classes—the Frankish and Norse wergeld of 200 gold solidi, on the one hand, and the Frisian, Saxon, Alamannic, Bavarian, and possibly Burgundian wergeld of 160 gold solidi on the other hand.