Westminster.[1] There were also silver byzantines, which, according to Camden, were valued at two shillings each. At an early period even some of the Roman imperial money might remain in use. "That gold and silver," Mr. Turner remarks, "had abounded in the island while it was possessed by the Romans and Britons, the coins that have been found at every period since, almost every year, sufficiently testify; and it was the frequency of these emerging to view which made treasure-trove an important part of our ancient laws, and which is mentioned by Alfred as one of the means of becoming wealthy."[2]
Slaves and cattle passed also as a sort of circulating medium during this period so generally that they are spoken of as living money. Cattle, the first wealth of mankind, were probably in most countries the first money; that is to say, commodities were valued at so many cattle, and cattle were commonly given in exchange for all other things. When metal money, therefore, was first introduced, it was looked upon not as a convenient representative of commodities or property of all kinds, but only as a substitute for cattle; some of the oldest coins have the figures of cattle stamped on them; and in some languages money was actually called cattle. Thus pecus, cattle, is the origin of the Latin pecunia, money, and of our English pecuniary. The same thing is very curiously shown by the history of another still existing term, the word mulct, meaning a fine or pecuniary penalty. Mulct is a translation of the Latin mulcta, or, as it is more properly written, multa, which was an ancient Roman law-term for a fine, but which the Roman lawyers and antiquaries themselves, as we learn from Aulus Geilius, admitted to have originally meant a sheep, or rather a ram. Varro asserted that it was a Samnite word, and that the Samnites, the descendants of the old Sabines, had used it in that sense within his own recollection. It is remarkable that the original word still survives, in its original signification, in the Celtic dialects of Ireland and Scotland, in
