BRITISH COMMERCE
119
scarcer, that fourteen pounds eight ounces of the former were exchanged for a pound of the latter. In England, in the Saxon times, the legal proportion appears to have been as one to twelve. After the Conquest, however, gold became cheaper; and, about the middle of the twelfth century, one pound of it was exchanged for nine pounds of silver. In the beginning of the thirteenth century we find the value of silver rated to that of gold in the proportion of ten to one. At present the proportion is about as fourteen to one.
