314 LIVING MONEY. CHAP. XII. 



We select a few facts to show how very small 

 must have been the quantity of money at that 

 period in Britain, and how very low was the me- 

 tallic valuation of every description of property. 



The gold coin which circulated in Britain was 

 almost exclusively that struck by the Romans at 

 Constantinople, the larger pieces of which de- 

 rived their name of Bezants or Byzants from that 

 city. A pound of gold was coined into seventy- 

 two of these pieces. The celebrated St. Dunstan 

 purchased of king Edward the manor of Hendon, 

 in Middlesex, about the year 960, for two hun- 

 dred bezants, or a little more than three pounds' 

 weight of gold, which would make the cost of 

 that manor one hundred and forty or fifty 

 pounds ; certainly not one hundredth, scarcely 

 one thousandth part of its present value in gold 1 . 



Alfred the Great was one of the richest 

 princes of the age, but he bequeathed by his 

 will five hundred pounds only to each of his 

 sons, and one hundred pounds to each of his 

 three daughters. As the Saxon pound weight 

 of silver, the money here spoken of, was 5400 

 grains, it may be valued at two pounds sixteen 

 shillings of our present money, thus making the 

 legacies to the sons fourteen hundred pounds, 

 and those to the daughters two hundred and 

 eighty pounds c . 



1 Camden's Remains, p. 182. 



2 Testamentum yElfredi apud Assar, p. 23. 



