CHAPTER XV.
GENERAL CONCLUSIONS.
Bearing of the results upon the division of classes and the character of holdings.
Before concluding this Essay it may be well in a final chapter to consider its results in their bearing upon the conditions of early Anglo-Saxon society, and especially with regard to the division of classes and the character of the holdings.
The object has been to approach these difficult questions from the point of view of tribal custom.
The amount of wergelds the main clue.
The main clue to an understanding of the division of classes has been the amount of the wergelds.
The general correspondence in wergelds throughout Western Europe.
The trouble taken to arrive at a correct knowledge of the currencies in which the wergelds were paid, tedious as it may have seemed to the reader, will not have been thrown away if it has led to the recognition of the fact that there was a very general correspondence in the amount of the wergelds tenaciously adhered to by the tribes of Western Europe, whether remaining in their old homes or settled in newly conquered countries. The amount of the wergelds was not seemingly a matter of race. Cymric and German customs were singularly similar.