Kinship in Anglo-Saxon England

There is a great text in the Welsh laws that tells us that a man who killed another, and who wished to make proper amends, paid one-ninth of his victim's blood-price to the offended kindred. His mother and father paid another ninth, and his brothers and sisters a further ninth again. The remaining two-thirds was to be found by the kindred to the seventh degree – some recensions say the ninth – and two-thirds of that in turn was to come from the paternal kin, one-third from the maternal. The blood-feud group in other words was ego-centred, differed from individual to individual, and was elaborate in structure. Descendants of the great-grandparents of great-grandparents on both sides would be involved.