I. THE ‘DE INSTITUTIS LUNDONIE’—OF CNUT (?)
Fresh point of view.
Having thus tried to obtain, from the so-called ‘Laws of Henry I.’ (whatever they may be), a Norman view of Anglo-Saxon custom, we recognise that on some points we may have learned more from this Norman view than could directly have been learned solely from the earlier Anglo-Saxon laws themselves.
The reason of this is obvious. Special laws issued at various times by Saxon kings do not profess to cover the whole ground of existing and well understood custom. Rather should special laws be regarded as modifications of custom made necessary at different periods by new circumstances. Thus no one of the sets of laws can be expected to give a general view of custom as a whole.
It is not strange, then, that we should owe some knowledge of early Anglo-Saxon custom to the Norman Conquest and the necessity after such an event to collect in a more connected and intelligible form what had formerly to some extent been matters of custom and tradition. And so it may be that our next chance of learning more may be found in the study of the documents and fragments belonging to the period of the Danish invasion of England, and especially the moment of transition from the English rule of Ethelred II. to the Danish rule of Cnut.
Danes and English live under their own laws. Danish law assumed to be well known.
The founding of the Danish kingdom of Cnut was an epoch in English history, and indeed in the history of Europe. It was followed inter alia by the legalisation in England of Scandinavian monetary reckoning in marks and ores which had already for some time been in use side by side with the English reckoning in scillings and pounds. And this was typical of the general position of things. In full coincidence with the working of tribal feeling in other countries, into the idea of conquest the amalgamation of the two peoples into one did not enter. Danes continued to live under their laws and the English under theirs, as Franks and Gallo-Romans did under Frankish rule. Certain things were enjoined upon both, but with a difference. It often happens that in documents of this period the ‘law of the English’ is specially explained while the Danish law is referred to as already known, thus revealing a Danish point of view.
In the Laws of Ethelred II. (s. 37) it is enacted that if anyone should be charged with plotting against the king, he must ‘clear himself with the threefold ordeal by the law of the English, and by the law of the Danes according as their law may be.’ And so in the Laws of Cnut penalties are stated as so many scillings by English law and by Danish law ‘as it formerly stood.’[215]
So that, from the Danish point of view, it was sometimes a matter of inquiry and record what the English law had been, while knowledge of Danish law was mostly taken for granted.
London under Cnut a port of the ‘greater Scandinavia.’
With regard to the coinage this was only partly the case. Not that Anglo-Saxon reckoning in pounds and scillings was abolished or that Danish currency was thenceforth the only one allowed. But, Cnut having styled himself ‘King of all England and King of the Danes and Norwegians,’ London had become in one sense a Scandinavian port.
The large sums paid to ‘the army’ by Ethelred for respite and peace had flooded Scandinavia with English silver money of his coinage.
This was so to such an extent that while the British Museum is rich in the coins of Ethelred, still more of them are to be found in Scandinavian museums.[216] And one marked result of the increased intercourse with England was an increase also in the Scandinavian coinage, the type of which was chiefly taken from the coins of Ethelred II.[217]
London had become to some extent the commercial capital indirectly of what has been happily called the ‘Greater Scandinavia.’
In the words of Mr. Keary:[218] ‘The Greater Scandinavia, with older countries, included (counting from the East to the West) a large district in the North and West of Russia extending from Kiev to Lake Ladoga. It included Sweden, Norway, Denmark and a strip of land in North Germany (Mecklenburg), Northern England, Man, most of the Western Scottish Islands, the Orkneys and Shetlands … settlements in Ireland and colonies in the Faroes and Iceland—a stretch of territories inhabited by peoples closely allied in blood, in speech, and in customs.’
Was it likely, then, that Cnut in making London the commercial capital of his kingdom should adopt the English monetary system unchanged, without regard to that in use in the North?
Happily, in the document known as the ‘De Institutis Lundonie’ we have an interesting glimpse into the conditions of the port of London, and in its final clause definite reference to the legalisation of the Danish currency.
The commerce of London.
This document has hitherto been placed doubtfully under the reign of Ethelred II. with some others of about the same period, but there is no evidence to show that it should be so placed rather than under the reign of Cnut. It exists only in Latin and it contains no mention of Ethelred, while its final clause becomes intelligible only, I think, if regarded as enacted after the accession of Cnut.
We learn from the document that Aldersgate and Cripplegate were the two gates which had guards.
Billingsgate, being on the river, was treated as a port. Boats on arrival paid toll according to size, smaller ones a halfpenny, boats with sails one penny, ‘a ceol vel hulcus’ fourpence if it should lie there. Ships laden with wood paid ‘one timber’ from their cargo. Those coming with fish to the bridge also paid toll.
Men from Rouen, with wine or whale, paid six shillings per ship and the twentieth lump of the whale.
Men of Flanders, Normandy, and France declared their cargoes and paid toll. Goods overland through Holland and Belgium were also examined and paid toll. Men of the Emperor who came in their ships were to be held worthy of the same good laws as ‘our people (sicut nos).’
From this it would appear that a good deal of the trade from the Baltic was an overland trade and in Frankish hands. The ‘men of the Emperor’ who were treated on equal terms with ‘our people’ were probably the merchants whose successors ultimately established the Hanseatic towns and two or three centuries later the Hanseatic league.
Cnut’s ores of 16d. or 1/15 of the pound.
The final clause is as follows:—
(9) Et ut monetarii pauciores sint, quam antea fuerint: in omni summo portu iii, et in omni alio portu sit unus monetarius:
And that there be fewer moneyers[219] than there formerly were, in every chief town iii and in every other town let there be one moneyer.
et illi habeant suboperarios suos in suo crimine, quod purum faciant et recti ponderis, per eandem witam, quam prediximus.
And let them have their sub-workers under their responsibility, so that they make pure [money] and of right weight, under the penalties aforesaid.
Et ipsi qui portus custodiant, efficiant per overhirnessam meam, ut omne pondus sit marcatum ad pondus, quo pecunia mea recipitur et eorum singulum signetur ita, quod xv oræ libram faciant. Et custodiant omnes monetam, sicut vos docere praecipio [? praecepto], et omnes elegimus.
And let those who have charge of the towns secure, under penalties, that every weight shall be marked at the weight by which my money is received, and that each of them is so signed that xv ores make a pound. And let all maintain the coinage in accordance with the orders we have chosen to enjoin upon you and all men.
This clause has already been alluded to in connection with the ‘Laws of the Bretts and Scots.’ The ore of sixteen pence in which the payments of those laws were to be made was the ore described in this clause, for the ore of one fifteenth of the pound was the ore of sixteen pence.
The wording of the clause is very distinct. There were to be monetarii (mintmen) at the several mercantile centres, one at each lesser town and at the chief towns three. And every weight used by them was to be marked to the weight at which ‘my money’ was received and every one of the weights was to be marked ‘so that fifteen ores make a pound.’
The pound was no doubt the Frankish and English pound which since the time of Charlemagne and Offa contained 7680 wheat-grains and was divided according to English reckoning into twelve ounces of 640 wheat-grains or twenty-pence of 32 wheat-grains. The Danish ore of one fifteenth part of the pound was therefore of 512 wheat-grains or sixteen pence.
And there is good reason to believe that this ore was the ore in general use in Scandinavian commerce. We have seen that the Scandinavian ore, like the Merovingian ounce, when reckoned in wheat-grains was the Roman ounce of 576 wheat-grains, but that in actual weight it had sunk below the Roman standard. The ‘ortug’ or stater had apparently in actual weight fallen back to the weight of the stater of the ancient Eastern or Merovingian standard, viz. 8·18 grammes, so that the ore or ounce of three ortugs of this weight would weigh 24·54 grammes. And this was almost exactly one fifteenth of the Anglo-Saxon pound.[220]
We may therefore with some confidence regard the ore legalised by Cnut for commercial use as practically identical in weight of silver with the ore of three ortugs in use in the Baltic and generally in Scandinavian trade.
Cnut divides his ore into 20 light pence.
Moreover, when we turn to the actual coinage of Cnut we find that by a sweeping change he reduced the weight of the silver penny from one twentieth of the Anglo-Saxon ounce to apparently one twentieth of this ore, intending, it would seem, to make his ore pass for payments as an ore of 20 pence instead of 16.[221]
When these facts are taken together, we can hardly, I think, be wrong in assigning the ‘De Institutis Lundonie’ to the time of the foundation of the Danish kingdom by Cnut and in considering its final clause as recording the legalisation of the Danish monetary system with its marks and ores for use in England and for purposes of international trade. The fact that the ‘ore of sixteen’ was in use not only in the ‘Laws of the Bretts and Scots’ but also in the Domesday survey, e.g. in the district between the Mersey and the Ribble, is a lasting proof of its use wherever Scandinavian conquest and commerce extended, possibly before and certainly long after it was legalised for English use by Cnut.