4. There were no stores in England at this time, but the people bought every thing they wanted at markets and fairs; and they used to salt a great deal of their meat and fish, that it might keep a long time.
5. In buying and selling, they sometimes used slaves and cattle, instead of money, a man slave being worth a pound of silver, and an ox worth a quarter of a pound, which was called five shillings, as a shilling was the twentieth part of a pound in weight.
6. If a nobleman, therefore, wanted to buy any thing of two pounds value, he could pay for it with two of his thralls, or eight oxen, and the seller was obliged to take them; but he could sell them again directly; for I am sorry to say there were slave markets in England till some time after the Norman Conquest.
7. Athelstan had a good deal of fighting to do, for the people of the Daneland revolted, and he was obliged to lead his soldiers into their territory, to bring them to order; and then he had to march against Howel, the Prince of Wales, who was defeated in battle, when Athelstan nobly gave him back his dominions, saying, “There was more glory in making a king than in dethroning one.”
8. I shall not mention all the kings that reigned after Athelstan, because there were many of them who did nothing that is worth telling about; but I must speak of a great churchman, named Dunstan, who was Archbishop of Canterbury, and, for several reigns, ruled the whole country, for the kings and nobles were obliged to do just as he pleased.
9. He was a very clever man, and so good a worker in metals that he made jewellery and bells, and gave them to some of the churches, which was considered an act of piety; for it was about this time that bells began to be used in England, and they were highly valued.
10. Dunstan persuaded the kings and rich noblemen, to rebuild the monasteries that had been plundered and destroyed by the Danes, and endow them with lands; so that, at last, nearly one-third of all the landed property in the kingdom belonged to the clergy.
11. There was a king named Edgar, the fourth after Athelstan, who did many useful things for the country; and, among others, he thought of a plan to destroy the wolves, which were so numerous in all the forests, that the people were in constant alarm for the safety of their sheep, and even of their little children.
12. Edgar, therefore, ordered that each of the princes of Wales, who had to pay tribute to the kings of England, should send, instead of money, three hundred wolves’ heads every year; so they were obliged to employ huntsmen to go into the woods to kill those dangerous animals, which were so generally destroyed in a few years that they have seldom been found in England ever since.