At first sight the Wessex payments for the eye, hand, and foot present an anomaly. The Wessex twelve-hynde wergeld of 1200 Wessex scillings of five pence at a ratio of 1:10 corresponds, as we have seen, with the Frankish freeman’s wergeld of 200 solidi. The payment for the eye, hand, and foot in King Alfred’s Laws is 66⅔ Wessex scillings, i.e. only one eighteenth of the twelve-hynde wergeld. But the explanation no doubt is that in the Laws of King Alfred the payments for injuries are stated for the twyhynde-man’s grade, those for the eye, hand, and foot being one third of the twyhyndeman’s wergeld of 200 Wessex scillings.
Kentish freeman’s wergeld most likely 200 Kentish scillings, or 4000 sceatts.
On the whole, therefore, these considerations seem to strengthen the supposition that the Kentish freeman’s wergeld was 200 Kentish scillings. That the Kentish wergeld should differ from that of Mercia and Wessex need not surprise us, seeing that we started with the warning that we should find it so as regards both the barones and villani. To the writer of the so-called Laws of Henry I. the eorl was no doubt the baro and the freeman or ceorl the villanus of Norman phraseology. And we need not wonder at his confusion if he had nothing but the laws to guide him. It is necessary, however, to look at the question of the wergelds from a broader point of view than his could be.
It must not be forgotten that the Continental wergelds of the Merovingian period were all stated in gold solidi. The first emigrants into Britain must have known this perfectly well. Kentish moneyers coined gold tremisses, and when they afterwards coined silver it was in silver tremisses of the same weight, which earned the name in England of ‘sceatts.’
Any exact comparison of English and Continental wergelds must obviously be dependent upon the ratio between gold and silver.
Archbishop Egbert’s priest’s wergeld also 4000 sceatts—i.e. 200 ounces of silver or Mina Italica of gold.
The Kentish scilling of two gold tremisses at 1:10 was reckoned in the Laws of Ethelbert as equal to 20 sceatts—i.e. to the Roman ounce—and the wergeld, if of 200 scillings, was thus, as we have seen, a wergeld in silver of 200 ounces or 4000 sceatts. We have seen also that Archbishop Egbert claimed for his priests a wergeld of 200 ounces of silver, which thus would accord exactly with the Kentish wergeld of 200 scillings. It might almost seem that he may have consulted his colleague the Archbishop of Canterbury and fixed his clerical demand in accordance with the Kentish wergeld rather than with that of Wessex or Mercia.
Nor was there anything unnatural or abnormal in the Kentish wergeld of 200 ounces of silver, inasmuch as 200 Roman ounces of silver at a ratio of 1:10 would equal the Mina Italica of twenty Roman ounces or of two ancient Roman pounds of gold.
We may therefore with confidence, but without claiming certainty, fairly state the Kentish wergelds in Kentish scillings and sceatts, thus:—
Kentish wergelds.