308 Archceologia. 



and, to a greater or less extent, all those who inhabited the land 

 before Pepys' time, kept what they had of cash, more than enough 

 for ordinary use, not in a strong box in a room in the house, from 

 which it might be carried away, but by burying it either within the 

 house, or in the yard or garden : for it must not be supposed that 

 the hoards of ancient coins which are so frequently found in digging 

 in fields, or roadsides, were merely placed in the earth in the open 

 country. They lay no doubt originally within some building or 

 inclosure, the traces of which have now disappeared. Life was then 

 very uncertain, and the owners of these treasures were often cut off 

 without leaving anybody acquainted with the place where their money 

 was concealed, and it remained undisturbed until accidentally dis- 

 covered in ages long subsequent. It is but natural for men who 

 possessed landed property to look upon whatever they found in it as 

 belonging rightly to themselves, and hence arose conflicting claims 

 between moral right, or supposed moral right, and legal right, 

 which, in times when people who were strong enough oftener 

 committed it to the decision of force than to law, led to disas- 

 trous feuds and even to wars. It was well known how Richard 

 Coeur de Lion met his death. Richard's feudal vassal, the Yicomte 

 of Limoges, having found a treasure on his estates, sent a part of 

 it to the king in the hope of appeasing him ; but the latter, having 

 been made acquainted with the circumstances of the case, claimed 

 the whole, and, on the vicomte's refusal to surrender it, assembled 

 some troops, marched against him, and, in an attack upon his castle, 

 received his death-wound. In other instances, the law of treasure 

 trove was made the instrument of vexatious acts of oppression and 

 injustice. A curious case of this kind occurred in Ireland in the 

 earlier half of the fourteenth century. A married man in the town 

 of Kilkenny, who appears to have united the businesses of banker 

 and usurer, buried his ready money within his house — we may 

 suppose under the floor of his cellar. He was involved in a quarrel 

 with some of his relatives, who had learnt somehow or other the 

 circumstances of the burial of his money, and one day, during his 

 absence from home, they broke into his house, dug' up the money, 

 and carried it away. Proceedings were, of course, commenced 

 against them for the robbery, but, when the case appeared clearly 

 to be going against them, they turned round, and pleaded that the 

 money was treasure trove, because found buried in the earth, and 

 that they were ready to give it up to the king, to whom it belonged. 

 This brought an interruption to the original trial, and led to a new 

 course of proceedings, which, in the then slow process of law, 

 although the owner of the money could easily establish his right to 

 it, tormented him for several years before it was decided. 



These anecdotes will be sufficient to show the great inconveniences 

 attending the law of treasure trove as a royalty. Like other royal- 

 ties, such as the right to mines of the precious metals, it remained 

 in the crown after the lands were given away, and could only be 

 alienated by a special grant. The feudal barons, therefore, and 

 especially the church and the ecclesiastical barons, laboured to obtain 

 this special grant with their estates, and gradually the right of 



