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If the guilt amounted to four pounds, he was to have eighteen jurors on his father's side, and four on his mother's: if to twenty-four pounds, he was to have sixty jurors, and this was called werelade. Weregild, or Weregeld, was the price of a man's head; which was paid partly to the king for the loss of his subject, partly to the lord whose vassal he was, and partly to the next of kin.
If a man had lain in wait for a freeman, 'cum virtute et solatio, with valour and comfort, i.e. with armed men to back him, and had found him standing or walking simply, and had shamefully held him, or 'battiderit, committed assault and battery on him, he must pay half the man's weregeld; the 'turpiter et ridiculum' being considered for a freeman as half as bad as death.
Not a word spoke De Graville; but his dark eye dwelt one minute with mingled pity and reverence on the King; then rising, he turned away; and slowly, as if he disdained to fly, strode back over the corpses of his countrymen. "Stay, all hands!" cried the King to his archers; "yon man hath tasted our salt, and done us good service of old. He hath paid his weregeld." Not a shaft was discharged.
We trace, however, an advance from the barbarous system of weregeld, or composition for murder and other crimes as private wrongs, towards a State system of criminal justice. In totally forbidding composition for blood, and asserting that indefeasible sanctity of human life which is the essential basis of civilization, the code of Moses stands contrasted with other primaeval codes.
If but by one word thou widen the breach between me and the King, outlaw thou enterest England, outlaw shalt thou depart for earldom and broad lands; choose the bread of the stranger, and the weregeld of the wolf!" The young Saxon, haughty as he was, quailed at his father's thrilling voice, bowed his head, and retreated sullenly.
And then how Peredeo and the treasure were sent to the Emperor at Constantinople; and how Peredeo slew a great lion in the theatre; and how Tiberius, when he saw that he was so mighty a man of his hands, bade put his eyes out; and how he hid two knives in his sleeves, and slew with them two great chamberlains of the Emperor; and so died, like Samson, says old Paul, having got good weregeld for the loss of his eyes a man for either eye.
And many a thegn who had before half believed in the guilt of Godwin as the murderer of Alfred, whispered in gasps to his neighbour: "There is no weregeld for manslaying on the head of him who smiles so in death on his old comrades in life!"
Alfred's laws unquestionably show a tendency to enforce loyalty to the king, and to enhance the guilt of treason, which, in the case of an attempt on the king's life, is punished with death and confiscation, instead of the old composition by payment of the royal weregeld.
And many a thegn who had before half believed in the guilt of Godwin as the murderer of Alfred, whispered in gasps to his neighbour: "There is no weregeld for manslaying on the head of him who smiles so in death on his old comrades in life!"
Would it indeed be possible, for instance, to convey a notion of the customs and manners of our Saxon forefathers without employing words so mixed up with their daily usages and modes of thinking as "weregeld" and "niddering"? Would any words from the modern vocabulary suggest the same idea, or embody the same meaning?
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