All we know is that on the homicide of a person, whoever he might be, in addition to the cro and galnes, the kelchin had to be paid. But it was a payment which, like the Cymric saraad, according to the interesting explanation given, did not go with the wergeld proper to the kindred or relations in blood. When a wife was slain, the husband, who was not a blood relation or of the kindred of the wife, took the kelchin, while the wergeld proper--cro and galnes--went to her kindred.
[Sidenote: Each grade had a precinct and a fine for breach of it. But not the carl or rustic.]
Turning to the payment which had to be made for breach of the peace or protection of the lord, it was a payment due to the king if the homicide were perpetrated ‘in pace regis,’ and to a person of each grade in succession, even to the thane’s grandson, in case the homicide were committed within his precinct. Only the carl or rustic received no payment, as presumably he was living on the land of a lord, who would, therefore, claim it.
The position of the carl or rustic, or in Norman French the _vilein_, is interesting. If his wife was killed the lord took the kelchin. The homicide was reckoned as an insult and loss to him. The wergeld did not go to the husband but to the kindred of the wife, as in the case of those of higher grade. So that, so far as this at least, there was recognition of kindred in the rustic’s position. His ‘cro and galnes’ was just about one sixth of that of the thane and presumably went to his kin--as his wife’s cro and galnes went to her kin.
There is one other point as yet unexplained--what was the ‘turhochret’?
Item if the woman of a carl be slain, the lord of the fee where he dwells shall have the kelchin _and the vilein shall have his wife’s turhochret_ of the kelchin and her kyn shall have the cro and the galnes.
There are so many Gaelic words in this document that there can be little doubt that the _turhochret_[208] is one of them. It seems to have been the part of the kelchin allowed by the lord to go to the husband in respect of the insult to his wife--_i.e._ _her_ share in the kelchin. Whatever it was, when the wife was slain, the husband retained it, while the lord took the rest of the kelchin, and the wife’s kin the cro and galnes of their slain kinswoman. The information given is scanty, but it is difficult to make this passage mean anything else.