He obliged the person maimed or injured, and the relations of one killed, to accept of a present from the aggressor and his relations,[**] as a compensation for the injury.[***] and to drop all farther prosecution of revenge.
That the accommodation of one quarrel might not be the source of more, this present was fixed and certain according to the rank of the person killed or injured, and was commonly paid in cattle, the chief property of those rude and uncultivated nations.
[* LL.Fris.tit.2, apud Lindenbrog.p.

491.] [** LL.

AEthelb, sect.23.LL.AElf.sect.

27] [*** Called by the Saxons "maegbota."] A present of this kind gratified the revenge of the injured family by the loss which the aggressor suffered: it satisfied then pride by the submission which it expressed: it diminished their regret for the loss or injury of a kinsman by their acquisition of new property; and thus general peace was for a moment restored to the society.[*] But when the German nations had been settled some time in the provinces of the Roman empire, they made still another step towards a more cultivated life, and their criminal justice gradually improved and refined itself.

The magistrate, whose office it was to guard public peace, and to suppress private animosities, conceived himself to be injured by every injury done to any of his people; and besides the compensation to the person who suffered, or to his family, he thought himself entitled to exact a fine, called the "fridwit," as an atonement for the breach of peace, and as a reward for the pains which he had taken in accommodating the quarrel.