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That the Anglo-Saxons did not use coined money before the Roman ecclesiastics introduced the custom, is an idea somewhat warranted by the expression they applied to coin. This was mynet, a coin, and from this, mynetian, to coin, and mynetere, a person coining. These words are obviously the Latin moneta and monetarius; and it usually happens that when one nation borrows such a term from another, they are indebted to the same source for the knowledge of the thing which it designates.

An expression of Bede once induced me to doubt if it did not imply a Saxon gold coin. He says that a lady, foretelling her death, described that she was addressed in a vision by some men, who said to her, that they were come to take with them the aureum numisma (meaning herself) which had come thither out of Kent. This complimentary trope Alfred translates by the expressions, gyldene mynet (1).

The passage certainly proves, that both Bede and Alfred knew of gold coins; and it certainly can be hardly doubted, that when gold coins cir- . culated in other parts of Europe, some from the different countries would find their way into England. The use of the word aureos, in the Historia Eliensis, implies gold coin (2); and that coins called aurei were circulated in Europe, is clear from the journal of the monks who travelled from Italy to Egypt in the ninth or tenth century. In this they mention that the master of the ship they sailed in charged them six aureos for their passage (3). But whether these aurei were those coined at Rome or Constantinople, or were the coins of Germany or France, or whether England really issued similar ones from its mint, no authority, yet known, warrants us to decide.

That the pennies of different countries varied in value, is proved by the same journal. Bernard, its author, affirms that it was then the custom of Alexandria to take money by weight, and that six of the solidi and denarii, which they took with them, weighed only three of those at Alexandria (4).

The silver penny was afterwards called, in the Norman times, an esterling, or sterling; but the time when the word began to be applied to money is not known (5).

There has been a variety of opinions about the value of the Saxon pound (6). We have proof, from Domesday, that in the time of the Confessor it consisted of twenty solidi or shillings. But Dr. Hickes contends that the Saxon pound consisted of sixty shillings (7), because, by the Saxon law in Mercia, the king's were gild was one hundred and twenty pounds, and amounted to the same as six thegns, whose were was twelve hundred shillings each (8). And certainly this passage has the force of declaring that the king's were was seven thousand two hundred shillings, and that these were equivalent to one hundred and twenty pounds; and according to this passage, the pound in Mercia contained sixty shillings. Other authors (9) assert that the pound had but forty-eight shillings.

(1) Bede, l. 3. c. 8. and Transl. p. 531.

(2) L aureos, p. 485. x aureos, ib. lxxx aureis, p. 484. c aureos, p. 486. (3) See before, p. 104.

(4) See before, p. 104.

(5) The laws of Edward I. order the penny of England to be round without clipping, and to weigh thirty-two grains of wheat, in the middle of the ear. Twenty of these were to make an ounce, and twelve ounces a pound. Spelm. Gloss. p. 241.

(6) The Welsh laws of Hoel dda use punt or pund as one of their terms for money. They have also the 'word ariant, which means literally silver, and ceiniawg, both these seem to imply a penny. See Wotton's Leges Wallicæ, p. 16. 20, 21. 27. Their word for (7) Hickes, Dissert. Ep. p. 111.

a coin is bath.

(8) Wilkins, Leg. Anglo-Sax. p. 72.

(9) As Camden, Spelman, and Fleetwood.

We have mentioned that a scyllinga, or shilling, consisted of five greater pennies, or of twelve smaller ones. But in the time of the Conqueror the English shilling had but four pennies: "15 solz de solt Engleis co est quer deners (1)." This passage occurs in the Conqueror's laws. It has been ingeniously attempted to reconcile these contradictions, by supposing that the value of the shilling was that which varied, and that the pound contained sixty shillings of four pennies in a shilling, or forty-eight shillings of five pennies in a shilling (2). To which we may add, twenty shillings of twelve pence in a shilling. These different figures, respectively multiplied together, give the same amount of two hundred and forty pennies in a pound. Yet though this supposition is plausible, it cannot be true, if the shilling was only a nominal sum, like the pound, because such variations as these attach to coined money, and not the terms merely used in numeration.

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The styca, the helling, and the feorthling, are also mentioned. The styca and feorthling are mentioned in a passage in Mark. "The poor widow threw in two stycas, that is, feorthling peninges, or the fourth part of a penny (3)." The helfling occurs in Luke: "Are not two sparrows sold for a helflinge (4)?" We cannot doubt that these were copper monies.

The thrymsa is reckoned by Hickes to be the third part of a shilling, or four pence (5). Yet the passage which makes the king's were thirty thousand sceatta, compared with the other which reckons it as thirty thousand thrymsa (6), seems to express that the thrymsa and the scætta were the

same.

On this dark subject of the Anglo-Saxon coinage, we must however confess, that the clouds which have long surrounded it have not yet been removed. The passages in Alfred's and in the Conqueror's laws imply that there were two sorts of pennies, the mærra or bener pennies, and the smaller ones. We have many Anglo-Saxon silver coins of these species; but no others.

Some ecclesiastical persons, as well as the king, and several places, had the privilege of coining. In the laws of Ethelstan, the places of the mints in his reign are thus enumerated:

"In Canterbury there are seven myneteras; four of the king's, two of the bishop's, and one of the abbot's.

"In Rochester there are three; two of the king, and one of the bishop.

In London eight,

In Winchester six,

In Lewes two,
In Hastings one,
Another in Chichester,

In Hampton two,

In Wareham two,

In Exeter two,

In Shaftesbury two,

Elsewhere one in the other burgs (7).

(1) Wilkins, Leg. Anglo-Sax. p. 221. In the copy of these laws in Ingulf, p. 89., expression is quer bener deners, or four better pennies.

(2) Clarke's preface to Wotton's Leges Wallicæ.

(3) Mark, chap. xii. 42.

(5) Hickes, Diss. Ep.

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(4) Luke, chap. xii. 6.

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In Domesday-book we find these monetarii mentioned :

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Each of these gave to the king twenty shillings and one mark of silver when money was coined.

The monetarii at Lewes paid twenty shillings each.

One Suetman is mentioned as a monetarius in Oxford.

At Worcester, when money was coined, each gave to London fifteen shillings for cuneis to receive the money.

At Hereford there were seven monetarii, of whom one was the bishop's. When money was renewed, each gave eighteen shillings, pro cuneis recipiendis; and for one month from the day in which they returned, each gave the king twenty shillings, and the bishop had the same of his man. When the king went into the city, the monetarii were to make as many pennies of his silver as he pleased. The seven in this city had their sac and soc. When the king's monetarius died, the king had his heriot : and if he died without dividing his estate, the king had all.

Huntingdon had three monetarii, rendering thirty shillings between the king and comes.

In Shrewsbury the king had three monetarii, who, after they had bought the cuneos monetæ, as other monetarii of the country, on the fifteenth day gave to the king twenty shillings each; and this was done when the money was coining.

There was a monetarius at Colchester.

At Chester there were seven monetarii, who gave to the king and comes seven pounds extra firman, when money was turned (1).

(1) For these, see Domesday-book, under the different places.

In April 1817, a ploughman working in a field near Dorking, in Surrey, struck his plough against a wooden box which was found to contain nearly seven hundred Saxon silver coins, or pennies, of the following kings :

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with about forty more that were dispersed. See Mr. T. Coombe's letter in Archol. V. xix. p. 110.

But the Annals of the coinage, by the late Rev. R. Ruding, give the best account and plates of the Anglo-Saxon coins.

Since this work was published, about the beginning of this year, 1820, a number of old silver coins, nine silver bracelets, and a thick silver twine, were found by a peasant, on digging a woody field in Bolstads Socked, in Sweden. Of the legible coins, eighty-seven were Anglo-Saxon ones. Eighty-three of these bear the date of 1005, and are of king Ethelred's reign and two of them of his father's, king Edgar. The king of Sweden has purchased them; and they are now deposited in the Royal Cabinet of Antiquities at Stockholm.

APPENDIX.

No. III.

THE HISTORY OF THE LAWS OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS.

CHAPTER I.

To trace the principles on which the laws of various nations have been formed, has been at all times an interesting object of intellectual exertion; and as the legislation of the more polished periods of a states is much governed by its ancient institutions, it will be important to consider the principles on which our Anglo-Saxon forefathers framed their laws to punish public wrongs, and to redress civil injuries.

There are three characters of transgression, under which the objectionable actions of mankind may be classed: VICES, CRIMES, and SIN.

They are frequently intermingled, and rarely stand distinct. Each commonly leads to the others, and they are repeatedly seen to run into each other. But by a more exact discrimination of their individual nature, and of their general character, we may consider those actions more peculiarly as VICES, which injure the well-being of the individual, without being intentionally directed against the welfare of others;-those as CRIMES, which unjustly invade the life, property, liberty, and happiness of our fellow creatures;-and those as SIN, which are offences committed against our Maker, or in violation of His promulgated laws and revealed will, or which are considered and represented by Him to have this displeasing and dangerous character in His estimation; of which He alone is the proper judge, and on which we can know nothing but from His information.

SIN is the proper subject of the consideration of the religious instructor and philosopher; and VICES, of the ethical treatises of the moral reasoner. But CRIMES are the express objects of all human legislation. It is against them that laws are more especially made; and to repress them is the main principle and primary cause of all human government.

The Deity Himself takes cognizance of SIN; appoints its punishment, and provides its remedies. VICES chastise themselves by the disgrace and evil which they always, in time, produce, by their own agency, on those who will practise them. But CRIMES have every where, by the common consent of all mankind, in all ages, and from an expérienced conviction of the necessity or expediency of the reprehension, been taken out of individual liberty and choice, and made, by special laws, the subjects of decided prohibition, of personal infamy, of social aversion, and of penal suffering.

Nations have, indeed, at different periods of their political course, marked different actions with their legislative brand; and neither the censure nor the deterring severity has been the same in every country of our many-peopled globe. But in all, some actions have been stamped as

crime by their unwritten or written law; and of these, FOUR descriptions of human offence have been universally, more or less, forbidden and punished.

These four offences, which have been every where considered as crimes, though often with some modifications, varying with the manners of the age and place, are HOMICIDE, PERSONAL INJURIES, THEFT, and ADULTERY; and we shall select these as the fittest heads under which we can exhibit the main principles of the criminal law of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors.

Their Laws on Homicide.

The principle of pecuniary punishment distinguishes the laws of the Anglo-Saxons, and of all the German nations. Whether it arose from the idea, that the punishment of crime should be attended with satisfaction to the state, or with some benefit to the individual injured, or his family, or his lord; or whether, in their fierce dispositions and warring habits, death was less dreaded as an evil than poverty; or whether the great were the authors of most of the crimes committed, and it was easier to make them responsible in their property than in their lives, we cannot at this distant era decide.

The Saxons made many distinctions in HOMICIDES. But all ranks of men were not of equal value in the eye of the Saxon law, nor their lives equally worth protecting. The Saxons had therefore established many nice distinctions in this respect. Our present legislation considers the life of one man as sacred as that of another, and will not admit the degree of the crime of murder to depend on the rank or property of the deceased. Hence a peasant is now as secured from wilful homicide as a nobleman. It was otherwise among the Saxons.

The protection which every man received was a curious exhibition of legislative arithmetic. Every man was valued at a certain sum, which was called his were; and whoever took his life, was punished by having to pay this were.

The were was the compensation allotted to the family or relations of the deceased for the loss of his life. But the Saxons had so far advanced in legislation, as to consider homicide as a public as well as private wrong. Hence, besides the redress appointed to the family of the deceased, another pecuniary fine was imposed on the murderer, which was called the wite. This was the satisfaction to be rendered to the community for the public wrong which had been committed. It was paid to the magistrate presiding over it, and varied according to the dignity of the person in whose jurisdiction the offence was committed; twelve shillings was the payment to an eorl, if the homicide occurred in his town, and fifty were forfeited to the king if the district were under the regal jurisdiction (1).

In the first Saxon laws which were committed to writing, or which have descended to us, and which were established in the beginning of the 7th century, murder appears to have been only punishable by the were and the wite, provided the homicide was not in the servile state. If an esne, a slave, killed a man, even unsinningly," it was not, as with us, esteemed an excusable homicide; it was punished by the forfeiture of all that he

(1) Wilkins, Leg. Saxon. p. 2, 3.

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