evenue, as the original author has done, at so much
a day. For my part, I do not imagine it so difficult to come at a pretty
accurate decision of the truth or falsehood of this story.

The above-mentioned manors are charged with rents from five to an
hundred pounds each. The greatest number of those I have seen in print
are under fifty; so that we may safely take that number as a just
medium; and then the whole amount of the demesne rents will be
70,000_l._, or 210,000_l._ of our money. This, though almost a fourth
less than the sum stated by Vitalis, still seems a great deal too high,
if we should suppose the whole sum, as that author does, to be paid in
money, and that money to be reckoned by real pounds of silver. But we
must observe, that, when sums of money are set down in old laws and
records, the interpretation of those words, pounds and shillings, is for
the most part oxen, sheep, corn, and provision. When real coin money was
to be paid, it was called white money, or _argentum album_, and was only
in a certain stipulated proportion to what was rendered in kind, and
that proportion generally very low. This method of paying rent, though
it entirely overturns the prodigious idea of that monarch's pecuniary
wealth, was far from being less conducive to his greatness. It enabled
him to feed a multitude of people,--one of the surest and largest
sources of influence, and which always outbuys money in the traffic of
affections. This revenue, which was the chief support of the dignity of
our Saxon kings, was considerably increased by the revival of Danegelt,
of the imposition of which we have already spoken, and which is supposed
to have produced an annual income of 40,000_l._ of money, as then
valued.

The nest branch of the king's revenue were the feudal duties, by him
first introduced into England,--namely, ward, marriage, relief, and
aids. By the first, the heir of every tenant who held immediately from
the crown, during his minority, was in ward for his body and his land to
the king; so that he had the formation of his mind at that early and
ductile age to mould to his own purposes, and the entire profits of his
estate either to augment his demesne or to gratify his dependants: and
as we have already seen how many and how vast estates, or rather,
princely possessions, were then held immediately of the crown, we may
comprehend how important an article this must have been.

Though the heir had attained his age before