MONEY AND MEASURES 



27 



of calculation. Payment was made by tale (numero), when 

 coins were accepted at their nominal value ; but often the 

 coins were assayed and weighed a process rendered neces- 

 sary by the circulation of coins of debased metal and light 

 weight. Money to which this process had been applied was 

 called "blanch" money. At Bosham current coin of the 

 nominal value of ^65 was required to equal 50 assayed 

 and weighed. 1 



It is only incidentally that Domesday Book gives any 

 details from which we can deduce the purchasing power of 

 money, and these details are tabulated below. For the sake 

 of comparison, corresponding prices are annexed for periods 

 before and after the Conquest. 



Columns I and 2 are taken from Chad wick's Studies in A. S. Institutions, 

 p. 2 ; columns 4 and 5 from the Pipe Rolls for those years ; column 6, from 

 Rogers, History of Agriculture, vol. i. 



No figures have been given in the above table showing 

 the price of wheat, as a discussion of the measures of Domes- 

 day Book is first necessary. Our record speaks of " sextary," 

 " modius," " amber," " mitta," and " seam," of which the three 

 latter are the easiest of explanation. In the thirteenth century 

 the amber was a measure equivalent to 4 bushels, and from 

 a passage in a Kentish will of the ninth century "thirty 

 ambers of good Welsh ale, which are equal to 15 mittas" 2 

 it would appear that the mitta was equal to 2 ambers, 

 or 8 bushels. 3 In Domesday Book the amber and the 



1 D. B., I. 16 a 2. z Thorpe, 460. 



3 Robertson, Hist. Essays, 68. 



