316 HIGH VALUE OF MONEY. CHAP. XII. 



the monarchy of Canute, may have made money 

 more scarce in this island than in the neigh- 

 bouring countries on the continent. It does, 

 however, appear that with them a great scarcity 

 was felt. It may not warrant the conclusion to 

 which Dr. Henry arrives, " that there was not 

 one fifteenth part of the cash in England at any 

 one time during the period between the arrival 

 of the Saxons and the Norman conquest that is 

 in it at present ; and that this observation may 

 be extended to almost every other country of 

 Europe V We are rather inclined to think that 

 the money in western Europe must have been 

 from a twelfth to a fifteenth of the present stock, 

 and that a larger portion was accumulated in 

 the eastern part of Europe, and especially at 

 Constantinople, the seat of the remnant of the 

 Roman power, where it remained, or at least a 

 large proportion of it, till the final conquest of 

 that city by the Turks. 



In France money must have been as scarce 

 during the period as in England or nearly so. 

 We find the king of that country, Charles the 

 Bold, at the latter end of the ninth century, 

 when projecting a military expedition into Italy, 

 could raise, by all methods, some of them very 

 violent, no larger a sum than ten thousand 



1 Henry, vol. iv. p. 281. 



