[208]: Doubt has been cast on this story, owing to the incidental mention by the chronicler of a shaped head-space in this coffin. This has been held to point to a twelfth century origin for the Legend, inasmuch as such head-spaces were not used until that date. In the present year(1910), however, an undoubtedly Roman sarcophagus thus shaped has been unearthed in Egypt. It is figured in the Illustrated London News (July 23, 1910).
[209]: Archdeacon Cunningham doubts this.
[211]: See my History of Cambridgeshire.
[212]: A mark of silver was worth 13s. 4d.; a mark of gold was 100 shillings. A labourer's wage was at this date 1d. per day, so that these sums must be multiplied thirty-fold to get their equivalent value at the present day.
[213]: The county, at this time, comprised only the district south of the Isle. This ecclesiastical connection between it and the Isle was the first towards their later unification. See p. [8].
[214]: We find the monks complaining that the £300 a year (equivalent to £9,000 now), to which the Abbey income sank in the twelfth century would barely support forty monks. The best working standard by which to ascertain how much money is worth in any given age is the current day-wage of a labourer. In the fourteenth century this was 1d.; it is now 2s. 6d. Therefore money went thirty times as far then as now.
[215]: This was a cassock lined with wool. The word surplice is derived from it, being an alb roomy enough to wear over a pellice.
[216]: The boots were of soft leather rising nearly to the knee.
[217]: This was probably the head-covering which the monks of Ely wore, by special licence from the Pope, "on account of the windy situation of their church." The name may survive in our modern "billy-cock."