Wergeld

The first law we find is one of Æthelbirht's:—"if a freeman lie with a freeman's wife, let him pay for it with his 'wer-geld,' and provide another wife with his own money, and bring her to the other."

If, then, at the time of the laws we look at the class of landowners who were prominent as odalmen or haulds—typical men with wergelds originally of 100 cows—they were not only men of full kindred whose full pedigree of freedom went back the necessary nine generations, but their grandfather’s grandfather must have possessed the land.

In its opening article the equality of the wergeld of a Novgorodian Slav with that of a Kievan Russian is proclaimed.

But Isildur refused this counsel, saying: ‘This I will have as weregild for my father’s death, and my brother’s. Was it not I that dealt the Enemy his death-blow?’

In these clauses a lord had the duty of yielding up his esne if he was guilty of homicide and paying the dead man's wergeld. If the esne escaped, his lord had then to pay the value of a further man (that is, one hundred shillings), which was a ceorl's wergeld and may well have been the value of an esne as well.

The folklaw set a price on every person's head and this price was easily converted into oath equivalents: if the wergeld to be paid for killing a churl was 200 shillings, for killing a thegn 1200 shillings, and for killing a king 7,200 shillings, then it follows that for a churl to sue a thegn he would need five other 200-shilling men prepared to swear alongside him, and to sue a king, thirty-five others.

A person's class could be determined by the amount of his or her wergeld. When a malefactor killed an innocent person, the offender had to pay a fine called a wergeld. This compensation was paid to the victim's kin. The higher a person's status was, the higher his or her wergeld was. A ceorl's wergeld was usually set at two hundred shillings. A thegn's wergeld might be 1,200 shillings...The king's wergeld was also set so high that no one would contemplate killing him, because to do so would bankrupt the malefactor's family and they would all be sold into slavery to pay the debt.