M. In order that this may be clear to you, we must go back a little further. In the original condition of the realm after the Conquest, as we have learned from our fathers, only victuals were paid to the kings from their lands, and not gold or silver by weight, and from such payments were supplied the necessaries for the daily use of the royal household; and those who had been appointed for this purpose knew certainly how much came from each estate. But for the payments or gifts to the knights and for other necessary things, money by tale[35] accrued from the pleas of the realm and from covenants,[36] and from the cities or castles where agriculture was not pursued. This practice, then, continued during the whole time of king William I., and as late as the times of king Henry his son; in fact, I myself have seen people who saw victuals brought at stated times from the royal estates to the court; and the officials of the royal household knew precisely from which counties wheat, and from which different kinds of meat or fodder for horses or any other necessaries, were due. Upon payment of these supplies according to the established amount of each, the royal officials put them to the sheriff’s account, reducing them to a sum of money; to wit, for a measure of wheat sufficient to make bread for a hundred men, 1s.; for the carcase of a fattened ox, 1s.; for a ram or a sheep, 4d.; and for the fodder of twenty horses, also 4d. But as time went on, when the same king was occupied beyond seas and in remote parts, repressing the tumult of war, it came to pass that the sum necessary to meet these operations was paid to him in money by tale. Meanwhile a grumbling multitude of husbandmen used to flock to the king’s court, or, what he thought worse, often used to press about him as he passed by, offering their ploughs as a sign of the decay of agriculture, for they were oppressed by innumerable hardships on account of the victuals, which they brought from their homes through all parts of the realm. The king listened to their complaints, and after taking counsel with the nobles, sent throughout the realm the wisest and most discreet men whom he knew for the purpose. They went about surveying the several estates with their own eyes, and, valuing the victuals paid from them, reduced the same to a sum of money. They decreed, further, that for the sum total of the amounts arising from all the estates in one county the sheriff of that county should be holden at the Exchequer; adding that he should pay by scale, that is, 6d. on each pound by tale. For they thought that in course of time it might well happen that the money, then good, might deteriorate. In this opinion they proved right. So they were forced to decree that the farm of manors should be paid not only by scale but by weight, which could only be done by making considerable additions. This rule of payment was observed for many years at the Exchequer, and so in the old yearly rolls of that king you will often find written “in the treasury 100l. by scale,” or, “in the treasury 100l. by weight.” Meanwhile an able man arose, farseeing in counsel, eloquent in speech, and by God’s grace preeminent in his immediate grasp of the deepest matters; you would say that he fulfilled what is written, “the grace of the Holy Ghost knows not slow movements.” He was summoned to the court by the king, obscure but not without nobility, and taught by his example “how extreme poverty is the school of men.” Increasing in favour with the king, the clergy and the people, he was made bishop of Salisbury, enjoyed the highest offices and honours in the realm, and possessed a consummate knowledge of the Exchequer. As to this there is no room for doubt, for the rolls themselves prove clearly that the Exchequer prospered exceedingly under him. And it is from his stores that the little knowledge we possess has trickled down. On this subject I refrain at present from speaking at length, since owing to the position which he filled, he has left behind him a lasting memorial of his high genius. Afterwards by the king’s order he came to the Exchequer; and after having sat there for some years, he found that the method of payment described above failed to satisfy the treasury to the full; for though it appeared to obtain its dues by tale and by weight, it was defrauded in actual substance. For it did not follow that if a man had paid for a pound 20s. by tale, even if the shillings corresponded to a pound in weight, he had therefore paid a pound of silver; for the money paid by him might have been mixed with copper or any ore, since no test was applied. In order, therefore, that the royal and the public advantage might at the same time be provided for, it was decreed, after consultation with the king himself, that the combustion or testing of the farm should be made in the aforesaid manner.
D. Why do you say “the public advantage?”
M. Because the sheriff, feeling aggrieved by the combustion of the debased money, when he is about to pay his farm, takes careful heed that the moneyers set under him do not transgress the established law; and when offenders are caught, they are so punished that others may be deterred by the example made of them.
THE OATH OF THE BARONS TO SUPPORT THE SUCCESSION OF MATILDA THE EMPRESS (1126).
Source.—William of Malmesbury, De gestis regum Anglorum, ed. Stubbs, vol. ii., p. 528. (Rolls Series.)
In the twenty-seventh year of his reign, king Henry came to England in the month of September, bringing his daughter with him; and at Christmas following he summoned to London a large number of the clergy and the barons, and there gave the county of Salop to his wife, the daughter of the Count of Louvain, whom he had wedded after Matilda’s death; grieved that she had no issue, and fearing that she would remain childless, he was meditating, with well-founded anxiety, the question of his successor to the throne. This matter had already been debated at length, and at this council he constrained and bound with an oath all the barons of the whole realm, and bishops and abbots also, to accept as their lady his daughter Matilda, formerly empress, without any delay or hesitation, if he should die without heir male. He pointed out how disastrous to the country had been the loss of his son, William, to whom the realm of right belonged; now there survived his daughter, in whom alone inhered the lawful succession, from her grandfather, her uncle and her father, all kings, and on her mother’s side, for centuries past....
So all who were thought to be of weight in this council, took the oath; first, William, archbishop of Canterbury, then the rest of the bishops, and the abbots also. The first of the laity to take the oath was David, king of Scotland, the empress’s uncle; then Stephen, count of Mortain and Boulogne, nephew of king Henry by his sister Adela; then Robert, the king’s son, born before he came to the throne, whom he had created earl of Gloucester.... There was, it is said, a remarkable dispute between Robert and Stephen, who strove in generous rivalry to be the first to take the oath, the one alleging the son’s privilege, the other the nephew’s rank. Thus all the barons were bound by fealty and oath, whereupon each departed to his own home. After Whitsuntide, however, the king sent his daughter to Normandy, ordering the archbishop of Rouen to betroth her to the son of Fulk (count of Anjou), a prince of great nobility and famous courage; the king himself made no delay in taking ship to Normandy and uniting them in marriage. Whereupon all men foretold prophetically that after his death they would break their oath. I have myself often heard Roger, bishop of Salisbury, say that he was loosed from the oath made to the empress, for he had sworn it on condition that the king would not give his daughter in marriage out of the realm without the advice of him and the rest of the baronage; and that no one authorized, no one had knowledge of the marriage except Robert, earl of Gloucester, Brian Fitz Count, and the bishop of Louviers. I do not relate this because I believe to be true the words of a man who knew how to adapt himself to every change of fickle fortune, but as a credible historian I set in writing common opinion.