or any other necessary things, were due. These being paid according to the measure fixed upon of each thing, the royal officials put them to the account of the sheriff, reducing them to a total of money: for a measure, namely, of grain enough for the bread of a hundred men, one shilling; for the body of a fattened ox, one shilling; for a ram or a sheep, 4d.; for the fodder of twenty horses, likewise 4d. But as time went on, when the same king was occupied across the channel and in remote places, in calming the tumults of war, it came about that the sum necessary for meeting these expenses was paid in ready money. Meanwhile there kept coming to the court of the king a complaining multitude of peasants; or, what seemed to him worse, they frequently came in front of him as he passed, proffering their ploughs as a sign of the defective agriculture; for they were oppressed by innumerable burdens on account of the victuals, which, having to traverse great distances in the realm, they brought from their lands. Yielding, therefore, to their complaints, the opinion of the nobles having been ascertained, he sent out throughout the kingdom the men most prudent and discreet in these matters. These, going around and examining with their own eyes the different estates, and estimating the victuals that were paid from them, reduced them to a sum of money. They decreed, moreover, that for the sum of the sums which was arrived at from all the estates in one county, the sheriff of that county should be bounden to the exchequer; adding that he should pay by scale,—that is, besides each cash pound, 6d. For they thought that, in course of time, it might easily come about that money, then good, might fall from its condition. Nor did their opinion prove false. Therefore they were compelled to decree that the farm of manors should be paid, not alone by scale, but by weight; which could not be done without adding a great deal. This rule of payment was observed for many years in the exchequer: whence, frequently, in the old yearly rolls of that king, thou wilt find written: "in the treasury 100 pounds according to scale," or, "in the treasury 100 pounds according to weight." Meanwhile there came into prominence a prudent man, provident in
