We thus seem to be driven to recognise the width and to some extent the bridgelessness, already in King Alfred’s time if not in King Ine’s, of the gulf between the position of the twelve-hynde landed class and that of the twy-hynde dependent class of gafolgeldas and geburs who were tenants on their land.
It seems probable that, though technically and really free in the sense of not being thralls, the twy-hynde class, broadly speaking, may have found themselves very early, if not from the first, placed in an economic condition of service and servitude, including work as well as gafol, which by the ultimate disappearance of the middle rungs of the ladder might very easily slide into what is loosely called the ‘serfdom’ of later times.
In the meantime we realise that the abjectness of this semi-servile condition may be very easily exaggerated by modern associations with the terms ‘service’ and ‘serfdom.’
It is when we turn from the twy-hynde class to the position of the class above them, of gesithcund and twelve-hynde men, that we learn that a part at least of the risk of misunderstanding may lie in the difference between the tribal notion of service and freedom and the more modern one.
Position and services of the twelve-hynde class.
What, then, has tribal custom to teach us as to the position and services of the twelve-hynde class?
On a level with the Norse odalman.
Reverting once more to the compact between Alfred and Guthrum, Dane and English are to be equally dear at eight half-marks of gold. The Englishman, without any limiting adjective, is the twelve-hynde man. And he is put on a level with the Danish typical free landholder, the hauld or odalman of the Norse laws, whose wergeld under Norse law was that of the typical freeman everywhere—equivalent to the normal wergeld of 200 gold solidi, the mina of gold, the traditional wergeld of 100 head of cattle. It was six times that of the Norse leysing, just as the twelve-hyndeman’s wergeld in England was six times that of the ‘ceorl who sits on gafol land.’
The English twelve-hynde man is therefore put on a level with the Norse odaller or typical landholder. And so, as we have seen, the ceorl who rose by the middle rungs of the ladder into the twelve-hynde position had inter alia to become a landholder of 5 hides, and his family became gesithcund only after the landholding had continued to the fourth generation. His great-grandchildren then became gesithcund with a twelve-hynde wergeld.
Twelve-hynde men were landholders.