Caste and Race in India c10.81

c10.81

In Anglo-Saxon England society was divided into three well-marked classes of people: The nobleman, the common freeman, and the slave. There seems to have been also a fourth class called the "Lact". It represented a class "intermediate between freemen and slaves, which was rather infrequent in England though very common among the Teutonic peoples of the Continent".⁴ This class, which was a feature peculiar to Kentish society, seems to have had three sub-divisions differing in their wergelds, with wergelds of 80, 60, and 40 shillings respectively.⁵ The first class had two divisions, a higher and a lower order, the higher order, whose immediate overlord was the king, being subject to higher charges and heavier fines. The membership of the class was partly inherited and partly acquired. Possession of a certain amount of land by a family continuously for three generations bestowed permanent nobility on the members of that family.⁶ The second class comprised all the free persons of English blood who were not members of the first class. Though there were many sub-divisions in this class we find no evidence of any difference in wergeld,⁷ "the fixed sum with which a person's death must be atoned for to his kindred or which he might in some cases have to pay for his own misdoing." The nobleman's wergeld was six times that of a commoner's; and his oath also was worth as much.⁸ The slave being unfree was not a legal person and as such had no wergeld.