WEREGILD (Ang.-Sax., wer, man; and geld, satisfaction), a composition by which, according to the custom of the Anglo-Saxons, Franks, and other Teutonic people, homi cide and other heinous crimes arrainst the person were expiated. There was an estab lished progressive rate of weregild for homicide, varying at different times and among different Teutonic tribes, from the weregild of the ceorl, or peasant, to that of the king. In the time of Tacitus, the weregild for homicide among the Germans was due to the relatives of the deceased; that for other crimes one-half to the injured party, and one half to the state. The sum paid to the relatives in case of homicide, also known as the man-wyrth, seems to have been looked on as the equivalent of the dead man's value.
As the power of the community or king increased, the exaction of retribution for the death of its members was considered to be the duty of the state as well as of the relatives, and the principle of division was applied to homicide as well as manor crimes; each pay ment being a separate full equivalent for the value of the deceased; the one to appease the feud, the other to make atonement o the state. This double weregild is recognized in the compensation for the death of a king by the laws of the Mercians and Nor thumbrians. In the days of Edward the elder the weregild had become a much more complicated penalty, the composition for homicide consisting of four different payments, two of which, the or penalty for a breach of the peace, and the wertgild, went to the king as head of the state; while a sum called the halsfung was paid to the kindred to loosen the hand of the avenger of blood, and the manbbte was given to the overlord to compensate him for the loss of a vassal. The graduated scales of weregild in use among
the different Teutonic nations throw much light on the gradations of society at the period. It does not appear that among the nations who recognized the principle of weregild, the relatives were bound to accept a compensation for their kinsman's slaugh ter, in place of appeasing the death-feud by blood; the latter practice was often resorted to instead. It was only through the exertions of archbishop Theodore that Egfred, Christian king of the Angles of Northumbria, adopted the alternative of accepting a weregild for his brother slain in battle by the Mercians, in place of demanding the blood of the slayer. A similar principle to that of weregild for homicide seems to have been recognized by the Celtic nations, and there are traces of it in the Mosaic code.