face — for the Normans wore no beards — with a sceptre in his hand. The inscription in the circumference was this: "Le Rei Wilam; "[1] on the other side, a cross double to the ring, between four rowals of six points.
King Henry I. his penny was of the like weight, fineness, form of face, cross, etc.
This Henry, in the 8th year of his reign, ordained the penny, which was round, so to be quartered by the cross, that they might easily be broken into halfpence and farthings.[2] In the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th of King Richard I. his reign, and afterwards, I find commonly easterling money mentioned, and yet ofttimes the same is called argent, as afore, and not otherwise.
The first great sum that I read of to be paid in easterlings was in the reign of Richard I., when Robert, Earl of Leicester, being prisoner in France, proffered for his ransom a thousand marks easterlings, notwithstanding the easterling pence were long before. The weight of the easterling penny may appear by divers statutes, namely, of weights and measures, made in the 51st of Henry III. in these words: "Thirty-two graines of wheat, drie and round, taken in the middest of the eare, shoulde be the weight of a starling penie, 20 of those pence should waye one ounce, 12 ounces a pound Troy." It followeth in the statute eight pound to make a gallon of wine, and eight gallons a bushel of London measure, etc. Notwithstanding which statute, I find, in the 8th of Edward I., Gregorie Rokesley, mayor of London, being chief master or minister of the Kinge's Exchange, or mintes, a new coin being then appointed, the pound of easterling money should contain as afore twelve ounces; to wit, fine silver, such as was then made into foil, and was commonly called silver of Guthurons lane,[3] eleven ounces, two easterlings, and one ferling or farthing, and the other seventeen pence ob. q.[4] to be alloy. Also, the pound of money ought to weigh twenty shillings and three pence by account; so that no pound ought to be over twenty shillings and three pence, nor less than twenty shillings and two pence by account; the ounce to weigh twenty pence, the penny weight twenty-four grains (which twenty-four by weight then appointed were as much as the former thirty-two grains of wheat), a penny force twenty-
- ↑ W. Malsbury.
- ↑ Roger Hoveden.
- ↑ Guthuron's lane, now Gutter lane, leading out of Cheapside, was a small lane, formerly tenanted by goldsmiths; the person who gave his name to the lane, was evidently of Saxon or Danish origin.
- ↑ That is, seventeen pence halfpenny farthing to be alloy.
