Wergild

or WEREGILD.

In old English law. The price which, in a barbarous age, a person guilty of homicide or other enormous offense was required to pay, instead of receiving other punishment. 4 Bl. Comm. 188. See, for the etymology of this word, and a tariff which was paid for the murder of the different classes of men, Guizot, Essais sur l'Histoire de France, Essai, 4eme, c. 2, § 2.

In Old English Law. The price which, in a barbarous age, a person guilty of homicide or other enormous offence was required to pay, instead of receiving other punishment. 4 Bla. Com. 188. The "man's price" which a man's kinfolk were entitled to demand from his slayer, and which he sometimes might have to pay for his own offences. Pollock, 1 Sel. Essays in Anglo-Amer. Legal Hist. 98. The only punishments, in the proper sense, applicable to free men, were money fines, and death in the extreme cases. 1 Poll. & Maitl. 26. In the early days there was no power to compel their acceptance; Jenks, Hist. E. L. 158. The life of every man, not excepting that of the king himself, was estimated at a certain price, which was called the wer or aestimatio capitis. The amount varied according to the dignity of the person murdered. The price of wounds was also varied according to the nature of the wound, or the member injured. See Thorpe, Wergilds; Seebohm, Tribal Customs in Anglo-Saxon Law.