household; neither his necessary nor his voluntary expenses were
considerable. Yet the effects of many years' scraping and hoarding left
at his death but 60,000_l._,--not the sixth part of one year's income,
according to this account, of one branch of his revenue; and this was
then esteemed a vast treasure. Edgar Atheling, on being reconciled to
the king, was allowed a mark a day for his expenses, and he was thought
to be allowed sufficiently, though he received it in some sort as an
equivalent for his right to the crown. I venture on this digression,
because writers in an ignorant age, making guesses at random, impose on
more enlightened times, and affect by their mistakes many of our
reasonings on affairs of consequence; and it is the error of all
ignorant people to rate unknown times, distances, and sums very far
beyond their real extent. There is even something childish and whimsical
in computing this revenue, as the original author has done, at so much
a day. For my part, I do not imagine it so difficult to come at a pretty
accurate decision of the truth or falsehood of this story.

The above-mentioned manors are charged with rents from five to an
hundred pounds each. The greatest number of those I have seen in print
are under fifty; so that we may safely take that number as a just
medium; and then the whole amount of the demesne rents will be
70,000_l._, or 210,000_l._ of our money. This, though almost a fourth
less than the sum stated by Vitalis, still seems a great deal too high,
if we should suppose the whole sum, as that author does, to be paid in
money, and that money to be reckoned by real pounds of silver. But we
must observe, that, when sums of money are set down in old laws and
records, the interpretation of those words, pounds and shillings, is for
the most part oxen, sheep, corn, and provision. When real coin money was
to be paid, it was called white money, or _argentum album_, and was only
in a certain stipulated proportion to what was rendered in kind, and