| For an | ‘Actor’ | 100 | solidi |
| For a | ‘Ministerialis’ | 60 | ” |
| ploughman, or swineherd, or shepherd, and other ‘servi’ | 30 | ” | |
| goldsmith | 100 | ” | |
| smith (iron) | 50 | ” | |
| carpenter | 40 | ” | |
| ‘This by order of the King.’ | |||
Under the Burgundian Law.
Now if from these clauses of the Lex Romana which relate to the Roman population, we turn to the Tit. II. of the Burgundian law proper of Gundebald ‘De homicidiis,’ we may gather what the old customary wergelds may have been, but at the same time recognise how strongly Roman law and ecclesiastical influence had led Gundebald to break through what to the Romanised conscience seemed to be the worst features of the system of tribal wergelds.
Original wergelds no longer adhered to. Homicide punished by death.
From Tit. II., ‘De homicidiis,’ it appears that the original wergelds were these:
| Optimatus nobilis | 300 | solidi |
| Aliquis in populo mediocris | 200 | ” |
| Minor persona | 150 | ” |
| Pretium servi | 30 | ” |
These wergelds closely correspond with those of the Alamannic and Bavarian laws; but the first clause enacts that the homicide of a freeman by another, of whatsoever nation, shall only be compounded for by the slayer’s blood: thus overriding tribal usage and introducing the Roman law.
The second clause enacts that if the homicide be in self-defence against violence, half the above-mentioned wergelds should be payable to the parentes of the slain.
Homicide by a slave.
Clause 3 enacts that if a slave, unknown to his master, shall slay a freeman, the slave shall be delivered up to death and the master free from liability. Clause 4 adds that if the master was privy to the crime of his slave both should be delivered to death. Clause 5 enacts that if the slave after the deed shall have disappeared, his master shall pay 30 solidi—the price of the slave—to the parentes of the slain. And lastly, in clause 6, the parentes of the slain are in all these cases warned that no one is to be answerable for the crime but the homicide himself, ‘because as we enact that the guilty shall be extirpated, so we cannot allow the innocent to suffer wrong.’