Note 114 — Chapter IV · SELECTION OF COMPURGATORS.

Sacramentum liberalis hominis, quem quidem vocant twelfhendeman, debet stare et valere juramentum septem villanorum (Cnuti Secular. cap. 127). The twelfhendeman meant a thane (Twelfhindus est homo plene nobilis i. Thainus.—Leg. Henrici I. Tit. lxxvi. § 4), whose price was 1200 solidi. So thoroughly did the structure of jurisprudence depend upon the system of wer-gild or composition, that the various classes of society were named according to the value of their heads. Thus the villein or cherleman was also called twyhindus or twyhindeman, his wer-gild being 200 solidi; the radcnicht (road-knight, or mounted follower) was a sexhendeman; and the comparative judicial weight of their oaths followed a similar scale of valuation, which was in force even subsequently to the Conquest (Leg. Henrici I. Tit. lxiv. § 2).