CHAP. XII. 



LIVING MONEY. 313 



Britain especially was so exhausted of the 

 precious metals in the form of money, that in 

 trafficking, what the Saxon writers call living 

 money was usual and legal. " This consisted of 

 slaves and cattle of all kinds which had a value 

 set upon them by law, at which they passed 

 current in the payment of debts and the pur- 

 chase of commodities of all kinds, and supplied 

 the deficiency of money properly so called." 

 " Thus for example, when a person owed an- 

 other a certain sum of money, which he had not 

 a sufficient quantity of coin to pay, he supplied 

 that deficiency by giving a certain number of 

 slaves, horses, cows or sheep, at the rate set upon 

 them by law ; when they passed for money to 

 make up the sum. All kinds of mulcts im- 

 posed by the state or penances by the church 

 might have been paid either in dead or living 

 money, as was most convenient ; with this single 

 exception, that the church, designing to dis- 

 courage slavery, refused to accept slaves as 

 money in the payment of penances 1 ." " In 

 those parts of Britain where coins were very 

 scarce, almost all debts were paid and purchases 

 made with living money. This was so much 

 the case both in Scotland and Wales, that it is 

 much doubted if any coins were struck in those 

 countries in the Saxon period 2 ." 



1 Henry's History of Britain, v. iv. p. 243. 5 Ibid. p. 244. 



