Tribal Custom in Anglo-Saxon Law / Being an Essay Supplemental to (1) 'The English Village Community', (2) 'The Tribal System in Wales'

by Frederic Seebohm

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valuable fragment of Mercian law in using the word sceatt referred back to ancient custom before the sceatt had been superseded by the penny, and therefore must be good evidence that the silver coins called sceatts in Mercia were similar to those called scætts in Kent.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of the New Testament the word denarius is translated by ‘pæning;’ for long before this the penny of 32 wheat-grains had superseded the old coinage of the ‘Sceatt series.’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.