II. THE SCÆTTS AND SCILLINGS OF THE KENTISH LAWS.
All the payments mentioned in the Kentish laws are stated in scætts and scillings—naturally, by far the larger number of them in the latter.
What were these scætts and scillings? First, what were the scætts?[278]
The scætts of 28·8 wheat-grains like Merovingian tremissis.
We have already seen that before the time of Offa the silver coinage current in England consisted mainly of the silver tremisses of Merovingian standard, i.e. twenty to the Roman ounce, or 28·8 wheat-grains. These are known to numismatists as silver pence of the Sceatt series.
That these silver coins were those known by the name of sceatts we seem to have the direct and independent evidence of the following fragment ‘On Mercian Law,’ already quoted but sufficiently important to be repeated here.[279]
Ceorles wergild is on Myrcna lage cc scill.
The ceorl’s wergeld is in the law of the Mercians 200 scillings.
Þegnes wergild is syx swa micel, þæt bið twelf hund scill.
The thane’s wergeld is six times as much, i.e. 1200 scillings.
Þonne bið cynges anfeald wergild six þegna wer be Myrcna laga þæt is xxx þusend sceatta, and þæt bið ealles cxx punda.…
Then is the King’s simple wergeld six thanes’ wergeld by Mercian law, i.e. 30,000 sceatts, and that is in all 120 pounds.…
Now, as previously observed, the sum of 30,000 sceatts must evidently be taken as a round sum. The statement that the King’s simple wergeld was 120 pounds or six times the thane’s wergeld of 1,200 Mercian scillings seems to make this clear, for 7200 Mercian scillings of four sceatts (28,800 sceatts) would amount exactly to 120 pounds.[280]
The sceatts minted by Kentish moneyers.
That the sceatts of this fragment of Mercian law were the same silver coins as the scætts of the Kentish laws is further confirmed by numismatic evidence. The evidence of the coins themselves and of the names of the moneyers impressed on them seems to make it probable that to a large extent till the time of Egbert, who was intimate with Charlemagne, and perhaps even till the time of his grandson Ethelbald, in the words of Mr. Keary, ‘Kent still provided all the currency of the South.’[281] It would seem, therefore, that practically during the whole period of the issue of the silver pence of the Sceatt series the greater part of them were minted by Kentish moneyers. And thus numismatic evidence applies not only to the coinage of Wessex but also to that of Mercia.[282]
We can hardly be wrong, then, in thinking that this valuable fragment of Mercian law in using the word sceatt referred back to ancient custom before the sceatt had been superseded by the penny, and therefore must be good evidence that the silver coins called sceatts in Mercia were similar to those called scætts in Kent. In other words the Kentish scætt, notwithstanding the slight difference in spelling, was almost certainly the silver sceatt of 28·8 wheat-grains, i.e. twenty to the Roman ounce.
It is quite true that the word sceatt was used in the laws in two senses, sometimes for ‘money’ or ‘property,’ and sometimes for the coin.[283] But so also was the scætt of the Kentish laws.[284] And it may not always be easy to ascertain with certainty which meaning is the right one.
But the Kentish and Mercian laws were not alone in using the word for the silver coin. The phrase ‘sceatts and scillings’ was elsewhere used to denote the typical smaller and larger monetary unit, or perhaps we ought to say the silver and the gold unit.
In the tenth-century translation of the New Testament the word denarius is translated by ‘pæning;’ for long before this the penny of 32 wheat-grains had superseded the old coinage of the ‘Sceatt series.’ But in the translation of Ulphilas the word ‘skatt’ is used for the silver denarius.[285]
At the same time it is important to observe that the word scilling was the Gothic word applied to the gold solidus in legal documents of the sixth century during Gothic rule in Italy.
According to the bilingual records in the archives of the Gothic church of St. Anastasia at Ravenna payments were made in so many ‘skilligans.’[286] So that probably silver skatts and certainly gold scillings were familiar to the Goths of Italy.
Sceatts and scillings.
Again, sceatts and scillings were evidently the two monetary units familiar to the mind of Cædmon or whoever was the author of the metrical translation of Genesis. In c. xiv. 23 Abraham is made to swear that he would take neither ‘sceat ne scilling’ from the King of Sodom.
Moreover, in the fragment on Oaths[287] in the Anglo-Saxon Laws (Thorpe, p. 76) the same phrase is used:
On lifiendes Godes naman. ne ðearf ic N. sceatt ne scylling. ne pænig ne pæniges weorð.
(s. 11) In the name of the living God I owe not to N. sceatt nor scilling, not penny nor penny’s worth.
Surely in both cases the phrase ‘sceatt ne scilling’ refers to coins or units of account of two denominations in current use, as in the Kentish laws.
It is even possible perhaps to find an illustration of the reckoning in sceatts and scillings in the well-known passage in the ‘Scald’s Tale’ already quoted.
se me beag forgeaf
on tham siex hund wæs
smætes goldes
gescyred sceatta
scilling-rime.
He me a bracelet gave
on which six hundred was
of beaten gold
scored of sceatts
in scillings reckoned.
If these words may be properly translated literally ‘Of sceatts in scillings reckoned’[288] and are taken to mean ‘600 sceatts in scillings reckoned,’ the phrase accords very closely with the method of reckoning in the Salic laws—‘so many hundred denarii, i.e. so many solidi.’
Returning to the sceatts and scillings of the Laws of Ethelbert, the most obvious suggestion would be that the currency in Kent was similar to that on the other side of the Channel under the Merovingian princes. The two courts were so closely connected by Ethelbert’s marriage, and probably by trade intercourse, that the most likely guess, at first sight, would be that the Kentish scætts were silver tremisses and the Kentish scillings gold solidi like those of the Lex Salica.
We have seen that the Merovingian currency was mainly in gold tremisses, and as many of the 100 gold tremisses contained in the celebrated ‘Crondale find’ are believed by numismatists to have been coined in Kent, by English moneyers, the currency of gold tremisses in England is directly confirmed, though the silver currency seems very soon to have superseded it.[289]
The scilling of 20 scætts = one ounce of silver.
At the date of Ethelbert’s Laws (A.D. 596) the Merovingian currency was still mainly gold—i.e. gold tremisses, three of which went to the gold solidus of the Salic Laws. And if the scilling of Ethelbert, like the solidus of the Franks, had been a solidus of forty denarii we might have concluded at once that Ethelbert’s scilling, like the Merovingian solidus, was a solidus of three gold tremisses, or forty silver sceatts.
But the facts apparently will not allow us to come to this conclusion.
Schmid has shown—I think, conclusively—by inference from certain passages in Ethelbert’s Laws, that the Kentish scilling was of twenty scætts instead of forty.[290] We therefore must deal with the Kentish scilling on its own evidence.
Now, twenty sceatts of 28·8 wheat-grains, as we have seen, made the Roman ounce of 576 wheat-grains. The Kentish scilling was therefore the equivalent of an ounce of silver. And so in the Kentish laws, so far as reckoning in silver was concerned, the same method was adopted as that of the Welsh, who reckoned in scores or unciæ of silver, and that which became the common Frankish and Norman reckoning of twenty pence to the ounce and twelve ounces to the pound.
Indeed, when we consider that under common Scandinavian custom gold and silver were weighed and reckoned in marks, ores, and ortugs, it would seem natural that the Kentish immigrants from the North should have been already familiar with a reckoning in ores or ounces of silver.
But why did they call the ounce of silver a scilling? We might as well perhaps ask why the Wessex scilling was five pence and the Mercian scilling four pence. But the word scilling had, as we have seen, been used by the Goths in Italy for the gold solidus. And on the Continent the gold solidus in the sixth and seventh centuries, and indeed till the time of Charlemagne, was so far the recognised symbol of value that the wergelds of the Northern tribes, whether they remained in the north or emigrated southwards, were invariably stated in their laws in gold solidi. The most natural inference would therefore seem to be that the Kentish scilling, like that of the Salic law, must have been a gold solidus equated, however, in account with twenty silver pence or scætts.
The Kentish scilling probably a solidus of two gold tremisses like the Saxon solidus.
Now, at the ratio of 1:10 the ore or ounce of twenty silver scætts would equal a gold solidus of two gold tremisses instead of three.[291] And when it is considered that the main Merovingian currency on the other side of the Channel was of gold tremisses it seems natural that the ounce of silver should be equated with an even number of gold tremisses.
Nor would there be anything unprecedented or unusual in a gold solidus of two tremisses instead of three. For we have seen that when Charlemagne conquered the Frisians and the Saxons, he found that the solidi in which they had traditionally paid their wergelds were not always, like the Imperial and the Salic solidi, of three gold tremisses, but that each district had its own peculiar solidus. The solidus of the southern division of Frisia was of two and a half gold tremisses. The solidus of the middle district was the ordinary gold solidus of three tremisses. The traditional solidus of the district presumably nearest to the Jutes, i.e. on both the Frisian and the Saxon side of the Weser, was the solidus of two tremisses. The Saxon solidus of two tremisses, representing the one-year-old bullock, was that in which according to the Lex Saxonum the Saxon wergelds had been traditionally paid.
We have no distinct mention of a Jutish solidus, but as the Jutes probably came from a district not far from that of the North Frisians and Saxons there would be nothing abnormal or surprising in their reckoning in the same solidus as their neighbours, viz. in the gold solidus of two tremisses, and in the Kentish immigrants continuing the same practice. But this as yet is only conjecture.
So far, then, as the facts of the prevalent coinage and currency are concerned, all that can be said is that the hypothesis that the Kentish scilling was that of two gold tremisses has a good deal of probability in its favour. But there is other and more direct evidence of the truth of the hypothesis.
In the first place, as already stated, in the preface to King Alfred’s Laws he expressly mentions his knowledge of the laws, not only of Ine and of Offa, but also of Ethelbert, the inference being that in his own laws he retained, inter alia, some of the enactments of Ethelbert which were in his own view worth retaining.[292]
Confirmation by other evidence. The King’s mund-byrd of five pounds common to Wessex and Kent.
Now, King Alfred fixed the king’s mund-byrd at five pounds of silver, i.e. 240 Wessex scillings, while he must have known that in the Kentish law the king’s mund-byrd was fifty Kentish scillings. The difference in scillings must have struck him, but he probably knew perfectly well what the Kentish scillings were. For when we compare these two mund-byrds we find that at a ratio between gold and silver of 1:12 (which, as we have seen, was the Frankish ratio of Charlemagne’s successors) fifty Kentish scillings of two gold tremisses did equal exactly five pounds. Fifty Kentish scillings or 100 Merovingian gold tremisses, at 1:12 were equal to 1200 silver tremisses or sceatts of the same weight, i.e. five pounds of 240 sceatts; or, in other words, 100 gold tremisses (nova moneta) were equal at the same ratio to five pounds of 240 of King Alfred’s pence of 32 wheat-grains. The equation was exact.
And further, we have seen that in the time of Cnut the Kentish king’s mund-byrd was well known and declared to be five pounds according to Kentish law, although in that law it was stated to be 50 scillings.
The passage has already been quoted from the MS. G of Cnut’s Church law, s. 3, in which, after stating that ‘the grith-bryce of the chief minster in cases entitled to “bot” is according to the king’s mund, that is five pounds by English law,’ the additional information is inserted,[293]
On cent lande æt þam mund bryce v pund þam cingce.
In Kent land for the mund-bryce v pounds to the King.
Further in the same MS. G of Cnut’s secular law, s. 63, is the following:[294]—
Gif hwa ham socne ge wyrce ge bete ꝥ mid .v. pundan. þam cingce on engla lage ⁊ on cent æt ham socne v. þam cingce ⁊ þreo þam arce bisceope ⁊ dena lage swa hit ærsteod ⁊ gif hine mon þær afylle licge ægilde.
If anyone commit hamsocn let him make bot for it with v pounds to the King by English law, and in Kent from hamsocn v to the King and three to the archbishop and by Danish law as it formerly stood, and if he there be killed let him lie unpaid for.
It is not very clear what the ham-socn was. In the Latin versions it is translated by ‘invasio domi.’ And it seems to be the same thing as the ‘heimsókn’ of the Norse laws.[295] It seems to be a breach of the peace within the sacred precinct of the ‘heim,’ and the penalty seems to place it on the same ground as the borh-bryce and mund-byrd of the king so as to have become in Cnut’s time one of the crimes which in Kent also involved a penalty of fifty Kentish scillings.[296]
Here, then, the inference again is that fifty Kentish scillings were equal in Cnut’s time to five pounds of silver.
It is quite true that these two statements of Kentish law are not found in the other manuscripts of Cnut’s laws, so that in one sense they may be regarded as interpolations, but in the MS. G they are not insertions made afterwards. In both passages the words form an integral part of the text, which throughout is written in a clear and excellent hand.
It is difficult to suggest any reason for the insertion of these two statements of Kentish law other than the deliberate intention to point out that the amount of the Kentish king’s mund-byrd of fifty Kentish scillings was the same as the Wessex mund-byrd of five pounds of silver.
In addition, therefore, to the fact that at a ratio of 1:12 between gold and silver the two amounts were alike, these passages seem to show that the penalty of fifty Kentish scillings had become permanently recognised in Cnut’s time as equal to the English penalty of five pounds of silver.[297]
If the comparison had been made throughout in silver sceatts, the equation would not have held good so exactly, for 1000 sceatts would not have equalled exactly five pounds, i.e. 1200 of the same sceatts. The exact equation seems to have been between fifty Kentish gold scillings of two tremisses, and five pounds of silver at the current Frankish ratio of 1:12. So that the direct evidence of these passages from Cnut’s laws goes very far to verify the hypothesis derived from numismatic considerations that the scilling of the Kentish laws was a gold scilling of two tremisses, like that of the Continental Saxons and North-East Frisians.
Scætts cannot have been farthings.
It is, however, only fair to say that Schmid, while adhering to the view that the Kentish scilling was of twenty sceatts, has suggested that these sceatts may have been, not silver tremisses or pence, but farthings, so that the Kentish scilling of twenty farthings might be identical with the Wessex scilling of 5d.[298] Konrad von Maurer held the same view.[299] But if this could be supposed for a moment, the Kentish scætt would then be only one quarter of the sceatt of the fragment of Mercian law, and the mund-byrd of King Ethelbert would be only a quarter of that of the Wessex King, notwithstanding the assertion in MS. G of the Laws of Cnut that the Kentish mund-byrd was five pounds of silver, like those of other English laws. With all deference, therefore, to the view of these great authorities, a careful examination of the evidence seems to lead to the conclusion that it cannot be maintained. Nor does there appear to be any reason why the Kentish scilling should be expected to be the same as the Wessex scilling, as we know that the Wessex scilling of 5d. differed from the Mercian scilling of 4d.
Kentish scilling therefore of two gold tremisses or twenty silver scætts or Roman ounce.
We adhere, then, to the view that the Kentish scilling was a scilling of two gold tremisses like the Saxon solidus, and that it was equated with the ore or Roman ounce of silver, i.e. twenty sceatts.
The reader will be able to form his own judgment as to whether examination of the various clauses of the Kentish Laws and the amounts of the wergelds and other payments now to be considered will confirm this conclusion or not. I think it will be found substantially to do so.