Elementary arithmetic, with brief notices of its history... by Robert Potts.

12

MONEY.

whose laws he shortly after ratified. He used all his arts to cajole
the people of England into the belief that he regarded them as his
natural subjects, and not as a conquered people.' He imitated the
form and type of the coinage of the late monarch Harold, and made
no alteration of the standard used in the mints of the kingdom, two
of which were at Cambridge and Oxford. In his charters he styled
himself "Ego Willielmus Dei Gratia Anglorum htereditario jure
factus" (Monanst. Angl. i., p. 44). He did not inscribe Dei gratia on
his coins, which have on the obverse his name and title as king, with
some of the leading letters of Anglorum. In the Domesday Book,
wherever any notice of his arrival in England is referred to, it is
alwvays made (with one exception, fol. 124, b), as if he had come to
his own dominions and without opposition.
The Domesday Book furnished him with the exact amount of
taxation he might impose in kind, or which might be commuted for
money. It is recorded, that the sheriff was ordered to commute bread
for 100 men or a pasture-fed ox for one shilling; a ram, sheep, or
provender for 20 horses for fourpence. The Conqueror fixed the rate
at which supplies or services might be commuted, and thus the value
of the money was determined. He considered every man bound to
pay according to what he had, and it does not appear he ever
demanded what his subjects had not; like a prudent shepherd, he
knew how much wool he could fleece his English flock; he was
satisfied with the fleece, but seldom or never touched the carcase. And
from the same document it appears he made little alteration in the
laws and ancient customs which prevailed in cities and boroughs
in the time of Edward. He retained the weight of the Saxon penny,
but introduced the Norman mode of computation by shillings of
12 pennies, and the pound of 20 shillings. In his laws the fines are
regulated by pounds, oras, marcs, shillings, and pennies. The shillings
are sometimes stated expressly to be English shillings of four pennies
each. In the Domesday Book various other coins or denominations
of money are to be found; such as the mite, farthing, halfpenny,
mark of gold and silver, ounce of gold and marsum. Of all these the
penny, halfpenny, and farthing are the only coins which have
descended to our times.
William II. (Rufus), 1087-1100, son of William I, succeeded
his father on the throne of England. He soon dissipated the
enormous wealth his father had accumulated. During his short
1 The conqueror entertaining an equal hatred towards the English and their
language, determined to depress the one and annihilate the other. However
superior their merit, the English were admitted to no dignity, but strangers were
preferred. Their language was interdicted, and the laws of the English kings
were translated into Norman French, and all his own laws were recorded in that
language or in Latin. His efforts to impose the Norman French on his English
subjects were unavailing, except to a very limited extent, as is clearly manifest from the predominance of the Saxon element in the English language of
the present day. A statute of Edw. IV., so late as 1482, appears in Norman
French.
When Gregory VII. (Hildebrand) despatched, in 1078, his legate to William,
whose claims to the crown had been favoured by his predecessor, William
replied-" Religious Father, your legate, Hubert, coming unto me, admonished
me, in your behalf, inasmuch as I should do fealty to you and your successors.
Fealty I would not do, nor will I; because I neither promised it, neither do I find
that my predecessors ever did it to your predecessors." Such was the assertion
of the Royal Supremacy of William, the first sovereign of the Norman line.