(b) The designs of “noble” and “groat” were not so exactly similar as the text might imply. The noble bears a king with sword and shield on a ship; the groat has a king’s head crowned.
(c) “Groats” were first struck in the reign of Ed. III; it is therefore questionable whether they had become the “commonest” silver coins.
(d) “Pence” and “farthings” were of silver.
(e) There was no coined “shilling” until Henry VII’s reign; until then, the “shilling” was only money of account.
p. 103. For “signing” of charters read “sealing.” No signing was necessary until the Statute of Frauds. See B. II. 112, “this dede I assele.”
p. 100. A reviewer in The Manchester Guardian has expressed strong disagreement with these generalizations on the medieval woman; and we are loth to neglect such criticisms from a serious source, even when they cannot be called corrections of fact. Both author and editor, on careful reconsideration, are still convinced that these words represent the actual documentary evidence; but their epigrammatic conciseness, necessitated by the whole plan of the book, may well have misled some readers. They would prefer now, therefore, to write thus:
“There was a very general tendency, in ecclesiastical circles, to a painful depreciation of women. Marriage (in spite of frequent protests that no such blame was intended) was often regarded by the clergy as a practical confession of failure, since the titles of ‘virgin’ and ‘martyr’ were most desirable. It will be remembered that Chaucer is even more explicit than Langland on the subject of clerical anti-feminism; and if Chaucer, like Dante, gives us fine types of women, these owe far more to the troubadour tradition than to any ecclesiastical source.”
Footnotes:
[1] Based on Professor Savine’s analysis of the returns in the Valor Ecclesiasticus (Oxford Studies in Social and Legal History), I, 269-288.