A. D, ro86. 307 



whereof the clergy poliefled 28,115, ahnoft a half of the country; and 

 as 1,422 belonged to the king, the whole of the barons had 30,678. 

 There were 45,01 1 parifli churches, and 62,080 villages, at this time in 

 England *. 



Of the ads of William for the benefit or the hurt of commerce we 

 know very little with certainty. The numerous fleet brought over by 

 him, when not engaged in ferrying himfelf and his armies to and from 

 the continent, was probably employed in trading between his old and 

 new territories and the adjacent coafls of France and Flanders, which 

 were all now conneded with the new mafters of England. Hence it 

 might be fuppofed, that, after the fhock occafioned by the conqueft was 

 got over, the trade of England muft have been greatly enlarged in this 

 reign : and we are told by William of Poidou, that he invited the refort 

 of foreign merchants by aflurances of fecurity and protedion. But un- 

 lefs the trade was all in the port of London, concerning the flate of 

 which in his time we have little or no information, we have juft feen 

 niofl unqueftionable proof that almofl all the other ports, and in gene- 

 ral all the towns, in England had declined very much from the condi- 

 tion they were in previous to his ufurpation. 



We may judge of the turbulent flate of the country from the law 

 which direded that m.arkets ihould be held nowhere but within burghs, 

 walled towns, caftles, and fafe places, where the king's culloms and laws 

 could be fecured from violation, the caftles, burghs, and cities, being 

 founded for the defence of the kingdom and the protedion of the peo- 

 ple. And they were indeed a moll valuable protedion to one clafs of 

 the people ; for in England, as well as on the continent, a flave, if he 

 efcaped from his mailer, and lived unclaimed during a year and a day 

 in any of the king's cities, burghs, or caftles, thereby became a free 

 man for ever. [Le^es Ediv. et Will. cc. 61, d^^ in Selderis ed. of Eadmer, 

 pp. 191, 193.] And the name of free-men, by which the members of 

 thofe corporations are diftinguiftied, appears to be a permanent memo- 

 rial of the once-unfree condition, and fubfequent emancipation, of a 

 great proportion of their predeceflbrs. 



I might be charged with negled if I were to fay nothing of the flrft 

 appearance of the word Jlerli?/^, as a diftinguifliing appellation of ftandard 

 money, which has been much contefted, as has alfo the etymology of ft. 

 Inftead of the money of England being firft fo called from an improve- 

 ment made in the reign of Richard I or John upon the coinage by arti- 

 ficers from the Eaft country, or Germany, called LfterUngs, as has been 



* Tliefe numbers are taken from Thomas Sprot, of England in the rei'gn of William I. But tlie 



a monk of St. AugulHne in Canterbury, as quoted opinions of our antiquaries upon both thofe points 



by Spelman in his Glojfary, vo. Feodum. are fo very difcordant, that I dare not pretend to 



If we knew the value of the rehef of a knight's adopt any one of them. They are collected and 



fee, and the proportion between it and the annual compared by I,ord Lyttleton in his notes to the 



value of the tftate, we might afcertain the rental feeond book of his Hi/lory of Henry II. 



4 



Q.q2 



