The kindred aids the accused with the weight of its oath, or else by fighting for him when private war is inevitable, or else again by paying a share of his wergild. The twelfhynd-man, then, is the man in possession of a full kindred, which assures him the maximum of credit in the court of justice, and enables him to produce "twelve hyndens," that is to say, twelve kinsmen representing twelve groups ready to defend him. The twy hynd-man is the man who does not enjoy this advantage; he can only produce two oath-helpers, or at least those whom he produces are worth only two hyndens, carry only one-sixth of the weight of the oath-helpers of the twelfhynd-man. Whether he be, by origin, an emancipated slave or a free man of low condition, or a native belonging to the conquered race, or or an immigrant foreigner, he is in every case a man who has not a family sufficiently numerous to protect him when he is accused. The result for him is that he is obliged to seek the protection of a magnate, an act fraught with great consequences; the twyhynd-men thus form the class of tenants dependent on a lord, who at critical times takes the place, for his men, of the powerful kindred, which is at once the pride and the support of the twelfhynd-man.

The unfortunate thing is that Mr. Seebohm gives no convincing reasons for the new translation which he gives of the hynden of Ini. There is no Objections reason for rejecting in, this passage its ordinary meaning: hund, a hundred.1 Moreover, we

1. Chapter 54 of Ini (see Liebermann, Gesetze, i, pp. 112-115) is, moreover, very obscure. Mr. Chadwick in his Studies on Anglo-Saxon Institutions (1905), pp. 134-151 has minutely studied the question of the value of the oath expressed in hides. A relatively satisfactory inter- \ pretation of Chapter 54 can be deduced from his laborious researches, an interpretation which very nearly agrees with the translation proposed by Liebermann in his edition. The first clause of the chapter would signify: when a man is accused of murder and wishes to purge himself of the accusation by oath, it is necessary that for each hundred shillings (which the composition he is threatened with having to pay comprises) an oath should intervene "of the value of thirty hides." This oath of the value of thirty hides is that of the twelfhynd-man; it is worth six times that

have an authentic document on the scale of wergilds: twelfhynd-man and twyhynd-man are explained in it in the clearest manner; hynd and hund are brought together in a manner which leaves no room for doubt.1

The traditional opinion implicitly accepted by Stubbs, and adopted also in the most recent works 2 ought then to be retained.3 This remark does not, however, at all diminish the importance which Mr. Seebohm so justly attaches to the social results of family solidarity. The participation of the kindred in the burdens and profits of the wergild is a fact of considerable significance in the history of law and manners, and the very terms whose meaning we have just been discussing sufficiently prove what a large share the wergild with all its consequences, had in the formation of the Germanic communities.

of the twyhynd-man or simple ceorl. For example, if the composition to be paid is 200 shillings, an oath proferred by two twelfhynd-men is necessary. But Mr. Chadwick has not succeeded in explaining the origin of the expression "oath of thirty hides." Mr. Seebohm, op. cit. pp. 379 sqq., quotes and comments on a passage from the Dialogue of archbishop Egbert, in which the hides are replaced by tributarii: a priest swears secundum numerum cxx tributariorum." Mr. Seebohm concludes from this that the hide of the laws of Ini is "the fiscal unit, paying gafol, which is designated by the familia of Bede." Mr. Hodgkin (in the Political History of England, edited by W. Hunt and R. L. Poole, i, 1906, p. 230) remarks that usually the ceorl did not possess five hides, and that the thegns were far from all having the immense estates which the different documents relative to the oaths seem to presuppose. According to him, the figures of hides given in these documents were entirely conventional. On the meaning of hyndena and hynden-man, cf. Athelstan, vi, 3, in Liebermann, Gesetze, i, p. 175.

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1. Twelfhyndes mannes wer is twelf hund scyllinga. Twyhyndes mannes wer is twa hund scill" (Liebermann, Gesetze, i, p. 392). That is to say the wergild of a twelve-hundred-man is twelve hundred shillings, the wergild of a two-hundred-man is two hundred shillings. 2. Besides Chadwick, op. cit., see P. Vinograduff, The Growth of the Manor, p. 125.

3. "The six-hynd-man," says Stubbs (Const. Hist., i, p. 179, note 3) "is a difficulty.' Mr. Chadwick (op. cit., pp. 87 sqq.) proposes a fairly satisfactory solution. The sixhynd-man would be sometimes a gesithcund who can ride on horseback in the service of the king, without, however, possessing the five hides necessary to be a tweljhynd-man, sometimes again a landowner having five hides, but of Welsh origin, and "worth" in consequence only one half an English owner of five hides. This class of sixhynd-men was doubtless hereditary and did not increase either from above or below, since, at the end of the Anglo-Saxon period, there is no longer any mention of it, and we must suppose it to have disappeared. Cf. Seebohm, op. cit., pp. 396 sqq.

39

incorrect

IV.

THE "BURH-GEAT-SETL."

STUBBS understands by the expression burh-geat-setl a right of jurisdiction without giving any further explanation. It has been shown recently The reading is that the text to which he refers, the little treatise which he alludes to, following Thorpe, under the name of Ranks, and which is entitled in the Quadripartitus: "De veteri consuetudine promotionum," has been badly read. There should be a comma after burh-geat and setl should be taken with the words on cynges healle which come after.2 It is thus that the phrase was understood in the old Latin translations. The compiler of the Quadripartitus says: "Et si villanus excrevisset, ut haberet plenarie quinque hidas terre sue proprie, ecclesiam et coquinam, timpanarium et januam, sedem et sundernotam in aula regis, deinceps erat taini lege dignus.' The compiler

of the Instituta Cnuti also writes: " . . et ecclesiam propriam et clocarium et coquinam et portam, sedem et privatum profectum in aula regis, etc." It is true that these Latin translations have not an indisputable

1. Const. Hist. i, pp. 86, 120, 210. H. Sweet, Dictionary of AngloSaxon (1897) says more explicitly: "Law-court held at city gate." Similarly Bosworth-Toller, Anglo-Saxon Dictionary: a town gate-seat, where a court was held for trying causes of family and tenants, ad urbis portam sedes.' As a matter of fact there is certainly no question of a tribunal held at the gates of a town. Mr. Maitland in Domesday Book and Beyond (p. 190; cf. p. 196, note 1) made a different mistake, and translated burh-geat-setl by "a house in the gate or street of the burh." 'Geat' cannot signify street. Mr. Maitland has given up this translation. See below.

2. The passage is as follows: "And gif ceorl getheah, that he hæfde fullice fif hida agenes landes, cirican and kycenan, bellhus and burhgeat, setl and sundernote on cynges healle. (Liebermann, Gesetze, i, pp. 456-457.)

authority. But Mr. Liebermann and before him Mr. W. H. Stevenson1 have pointed out that the palæographic mark of punctuation by which the word geat is followed (a full stop having the value of a comma), and the rhythm of the whole passage, equally forbid us to take setl with burh-geat.

Setl, a very vague word, denotes in a general way a Meaning of place; geat is the gate, and burh a Burh-geat fortified place, town, or house. The passage signifies therefore that, among the conditions necessary before a ceorl could become a thegn, he must have an assigned place and a special office (sundernote) in the hall, the court of the king, and also a belfry (bell-hus) and a "burh-gate.' burh-gate." What does this "burh-gate" mean? Mr. W. H. Stevenson, the learned editor of the Crawford Charters and of the Annales of Asser, sees in it nothing but a rhetorical figure: the part is taken for the whole, and the "burh-gate means simply the "burh," the fortified house. All idea of jurisdiction ought therefore to be laid aside. Stubbs and the other scholars who have made use of the passage not only, in Mr. Stevenson's opinion, retained an undoubted misreading but interpreted the expression badly. Mr. Maitland has rejected this last conclusion.2 Mr. Stevenson's article having been published in the most widely-circulated English historical review, and Mr. Maitland's refutation having possibly escaped the notice of many readers, it seemed necessary to note here that on the whole Stubbs was not mistaken as regards the meaning of "burh-geat." Mr. Maitland points out, in fact, the following clause in a charter granted to Robert Fitz-Harding: 3 "Cum tol et them et zoch et sache et belle et burgiet et infankenethef." The words 1. W. H. Stevenson, 'Burh-geat-setl,' in English Historical Review, xii, 1897, pp. 489 sqq.

2. Township and Borough, 1898, Appendix, pp. 209-210.

3. Printed in John Smyth, Lives of the Berkeleys, i, p. 22 (quoted by Maitland).

which surround" burgiet" here prove that there is question of an “outward and visible sign of jurisdiction or lordly power." The gate of the burh had become, like the belfry, a symbol of the right of justice. But for what reason? Miss Mary Bateson has quite recently completed and simplified the explanation.1 She shows that the seignorial court was often held near to the gate of the castle and to the belfry, and that a natural relation thus established itself between the gate, the belfry and jurisdictional power.

1. Borough Customs, ii, 1906, p. xvi, note 1.