bishop and by its first abbot, it would appear that the church and monasteries had abundance of it; and indeed the pecuniary payments appointed for them, besides their tithes and presents, gave them great facilities of acquiring it, as the fines and gafols poured still more into the royal exchequer. The great quantity of payments recorded in Domesday-book, as due to the king, in pounds, shillings, and pence, from the various subdivisions of lands in every county, show both the diffusion and the abundance of bullion among the Anglo-Saxons.

But our ancestors by their conquests among the Britons obtained immediately abundance of cattle, corn, slaves, agricultural instruments, and cultivated lands. They found in the island, as Gildas and Bede state, twenty-eight noble cities, and innumerable castles, with their walls, towers, and gates. Productive veins of copper, iron, lead, and even silver had been opened. A great supply of shell-fish, yielding a beautiful scarlet dye; and muscles with pearls, mostly white, but some of other colours, abounded on their shores. The marine animals, whales,

Thus for the Ely monastery they paid to various persons the following sums:

Thus a plough-alms, fifteen days before Easter; St. Peter's penny on his anniversary; the church sceat on St. Martin's; the light-money thrice a year; and the soul sceat at every grave. Wilk. Leg. Sax. 121. The church sceat was enforced by Ina, under a penalty of forty shillings, and twelve times the money withheld. Ib. p. 15. Besides these certainties, a quantity of money was always coming to them from wills, as already noticed. Other occasions also produced it. Thus a thegn, to have his parish church dedicated, brought a silver scutella of forty shillings. Hist. El. 467.

That the clergy and monasteries advanced money to the landed proprietors, we have an instance in Ely monastery. Oslac had to pay the king Edgar one hundred aureos; he had not so much, and borrowed of the bishop forty aureos, for which he gave him forty acres. Hist. El. 476.

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seals, and dolphins, frequented the coasts; salmons and other fish their rivers; and eels and water-fowl their pools and marshes. Vines in some places, and useful forests in all, increased their general resources of natural wealth.f

Settling in a country thus abundantly supplied with the means of affluence, it is not surprising that the Anglo-Saxons became a prosperous people, notwithstanding the retarding effects of their military and predatory habits. After the reign of Alfred they became gradually more commercial. The invasions of the Danes had the effect of connecting them with the countries in the north of Europe, and of leading them to distant voyages of intercourse and traffic. Their progress was such, that by the time of the Norman invasion they had become both populous and rich. Some evidence of their extending intercourse is given by the facts, that some Moors or Africans, as well as Spaniards, were in the country at that time.s

From the views that have been presented of the Anglo-Saxon classes of society, it is obvious that their unprovided poor must have been chiefly of the free. The vassal peasantry of the great and the clergy had their masters to depend upon or to relieve them. But when the freemen were destitute, their situation must have been deplorable. Jealously suspected and pursued by the laws, if they wandered to seek or solicit subsistence, they had no resource, if they could not join armies, or become minstrels and jugglers, or be enlisted as retainers in the service of the great, but to engage as servants to burghers and others, or to become robbers, outlaws, and foresters. Poor freemen are several times noticed in Domesday.h

It is perhaps in no age from the insufficient productions of nature that any would perish from want. The existing food on the earth always exceeds the wants of its actual inhabitants; but it cannot be distributed by any laws or polity just as individual necessities require. It can only flow to all through the regular channels of civilized society, on the system of equivalent exchange; and the means of acquiring this frequently fail. It is from the temporary want of an equivalent to exchange for the food they need, and not from the non-existence of that food, that so much misery usually pervades society, and at times rises to an afflicting height. Yet the evil cannot be remedied by a legislature without invading those sacred rights of property which are the cement of the social fabric. Benevolence must effect on this point what no law can command. The poor can only put

f See Gildas, and Bede's Hist.

Domesday-book mentions Matthæus de Mauritanie; and also a Servus, who was an Afrus, in the county of Gloucester; also Alured as Hispanus. P. 165, 170, 162, 86.

As in Suffolk, fifty-four freemen satis inopes.

themselves in possession of equivalents to exchange for food by their personal industry. Where the demand for their labour declines, a wise and discriminating charity must be active to contrive employments for the distressed, that they may acquire the means of obtaining subsistence from those who have it to dispose of, or must in her kindness distribute that subsistence without the equivalent, until increasing occupation can enable the distressed again to provide it.

These principles were not understood by our ancestors; yet the benevolent feelings of the clergy were always labouring to impress on the affluent the duty of succouring the needy. The church gave them the emphatic name of "the poor of God;" and they are frequently so mentioned in the laws: thus presenting them in the most interesting of all relations, as those which the Deity himself presents to human benevolence as his peculiar class, and for whom he solicits our favourable attentions.

But the supplies from individual liberality are always precarious, and usually temporary, and not so salutary to the necessitous as those which, with a conscious exertion of power, independence, and self-merit, they can obtain by their own industry. It was therefore a great blessing to the Anglo-Saxon society, that, as their population increased, an augmented traffic arose, and employments became more numerous. The property of the landholders gradually multiplied in permanent articles raised from their animals, quarries, mines, and woods; in their buildings, their furniture, their warlike stores, their leather apparatus, glass, pigments, vessels, and costly dresses. An enlarged taste for finery and novelty spread as their comforts multiplied. Foreign wares were valued and sought for; and what Anglo-Saxon toil or labour could produce, to supply the wants or gratify the fancies of foreigners, was taken out to barter. All these things gave so many channels of nutrition to those who had no lands, by presenting them with opportunities for obtaining the equivalents on which their subsistence depended. As the bullion of the country increased, it became, either coined or uncoined, the general and permanent equivalent. As it could be laid up without deterioration, and was always operative when it once became in use, the abundance of society increased, because no one hesitated to exchange his property for it. Until coin became the medium of barter, most would hesitate to part with the productions they had reared, and all classes suffered from the desire of hoarding. Coin or bullion released the commodities that all society wanted, from individual fear, prudence, or covetousness, that would for its own uses have withheld them, and sent them floating through society. in ten thousand ever-dividing channels. The Anglo-Saxons were in this happy state. Bullion, as we have remarked, sufficiently

abounded in the country, and was in full use in exchange for all things. In every reign after Athelstan the trade and employment of the country increased. Pride and the love of pleasure favoured their growth, and still more the fair taste for greater conveniences in every class of society. Population multiplied, and found more occupation for the numbers of its free classes, until it reached that amount at the time of the Conquest, which we shall proceed to enumerate,

CHAPTER IX.

Sketch of the Anglo-Saxon Population.

IN Domesday-book, we have a record of the Anglo-Saxon population, which, though not complete, yet affords us sufficient information to satisfy our general curiosity. The following summary has been taken from its statement. For the convenience of the reader the counties there noticed will be enumerated alphabetically here.

i Many facts are mentioned in the Chronicles, implying the quantity of the valuable metals in the monasteries, &c. Thus Hereward in his romantic attack of Peterborough, took from the crucifix there the crown of pure gold, and its footstool of red gold; the cope, all of gold and silver, hidden in the steeple; also two gilt shrines, and nine of silver; fifteen great crosses of gold and silver; and "so much gold and silver, and so much treasure in money, robes, and books, that no man can compute the amount." Gurney's Sax. Chron. p. 215.