These clauses taken together and followed carefully, I think, become intelligible.
How treated in Alfred’s and in Ine’s laws.
A man lends weapons to another who is engaged in a brawl, and the question arises how far he is to be responsible for what happens in the brawl. In the case dealt with in these clauses two things are involved—the lending of the weapons and the joining thereby in the fray. In the later laws there are provisions for both points. Under King Alfred’s laws (s. 19) the man who lends his weapon to another who kills some one therewith has to pay at least one third of the wergeld unless he can clear himself from evil intention.
Under Ine’s laws (s. 34) a man who joins in a fray in which someone is killed, even if he can clear himself from the slaying, has to pay as bot (gebete) one fourth of the wergeld of the slain person whether twy-hynde or ‘dearer born.’ Under Alfred (29 to 31) the actual slayer has to pay the wergeld, and in addition each of the others in the fray has to pay as ‘hloð-bote’ 30 scillings for a twy-hynde man, 60 for a six-hynde, and 120 for a twelve-hynde man.
These later precedents may materially help us in the understanding of the Kentish clauses.
Clauses 18 and 19 make the lender of the weapon pay a bot of six scillings though no evil be done or only street robbery occur.
Clause 20 provides for the case in which the man to whom he lent the weapon was slain, and in this case the bot is raised to twenty scillings.
The lender pays a medume wergeld for person slain.
Clause 21 seems to deal with the case of some one else being slain, and makes the lender liable to pay a bot of a ‘medume leod-gild’ of 100 scillings for mixing in the fray. It would be natural that the bot should be greater if another was slain than if the man to whom he lent the weapons had been slain. And if the later precedents are to guide us, the bot of a ‘medume wergeld’ should not in amount equal the whole wergeld but only a proportion of the wergeld. If the bot of 100 scillings might be considered as equal to a half-wergeld we should gain a clue to what the whole wergeld might be. And this would be a tempting inference. But we are not, it seems, as yet warranted in making it. We must therefore at present content ourselves with the conclusion that the ‘medume wergeld’ cannot mean a whole wergeld, otherwise the lender of the weapon would pay as bot as much as the wergeld would be if he had killed the man himself.
Clause 22 makes 20 scillings payable at the open grave and the whole leod in forty nights. It refers apparently to the actual slayer’s liability to pay the whole wergeld (ealne leod); and finally clause 23 states that if the slayer depart from the land his kindred shall pay half the wergeld of the slain person. We are not told to whom the bot of the ‘medume wergeld’ of 100 scillings was to be paid, nor whether it was to be a part of the wergeld or additional to the ‘ealne leod’ paid by the actual slayer. The later laws, as we have seen, afford precedents for both alternatives.