serts
that this branch alone produced a thousand pounds a day,[72]--which,
valuing the pound, as it was then estimated, at a real pound of silver,
and then allowing for the difference in value since that time, will make
near twelve millions of our money. This account, coming from such an
authority, has been copied without examination by all the succeeding
historians. If we were to admit the truth of it, we must entirely change
our ideas concerning the quantity of money which then circulated in
Europe. And it is a matter altogether monstrous and incredible in an age
when there was little traffic in this nation, and the traffic of all
nations circulated but little real coin, when the tenants paid the
greatest part of their rents in kind, and when it may be greatly
doubted whether there was so much current money in the nation as is said
to have come into the king's coffers from this one branch, of his
revenue only. For it amounts to a twelfth part of all the circulating
species which a trade infinitely more extensive has derived from sources
infinitely more exuberant, to this wealthy nation, in this improved age.
Neither must we think that the whole revenue of this prince ever rose to
such a sum. The great fountain which fed his treasury must have been
Danegelt, which, upon any reasonable calculation, could not possibly
exceed 120,000_l._ of our money, if it ever reached that sum. William
was observed to be a great hoarder, and very avaricious; his army was
maintained without any expense to him, his demesne supported his
household; neither his necessary nor his voluntary expenses were
considerable. Yet the effects of many years' scraping and hoarding left
at his death but 60,000_l._,--not the sixth part of one year's income,
according to this account, of one branch of his revenue; and this was
then esteemed a vast treasure. Edgar Atheling, on being reconciled to
the king, was allowed a mark a day for his expenses, and he was thought
to be allowed sufficiently, though he received it in some sort as an
equivalent for his right to the crown. I venture on this digression,
because writers in an ignorant age, making guesses at random, impose on
more enlightened times, and affect by their mistakes many of our
reasonings on affairs of consequence; and it is the error of all
ignorant people to rate unknown times, distances, and sums very far
beyond their real extent. There is even something childish and whimsical
in computing this r