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.
II. FRAGMENT ‘OF “GRITH” AND OF “MUND.”’
Having gained from the ‘De Institutis Lundonie’ some sense of the greatness of the change to England consequent upon the accession of Cnut and also of the importance of England to Cnut’s Scandinavian kingdom, we may now turn to the consideration of certain documents which seem to be attempts made during this period of change to realise and record what had been Anglo-Saxon custom.
Mund-bryce of the king and of the Church five pounds.
The first clauses of Cnut’s Church laws refer to the maintenance of the rights of the Church as to ‘grith and frith.’[222] ‘Because God’s grith is of all griths the best, and next thereto the king’s, it is very right that God’s church-grith within walls and a Christian king’s hand-grith stand equally inviolate,’ so that anyone infringing either ‘shall forfeit land and life unless the king be merciful to him.’[223] A homicide within church walls was to be ‘botless,’ unless the king ‘granted life against full bot.’ In this case the homicide must pay his full wer to Christ or the king, as the case might be, and so ‘inlaw himself to bot.’ Then the bot was to be the same as the king’s ‘mund-bryce’ of five pounds.