Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 1.djvu/81

Rh only four pennies is a law of Athelstan, in which 7200 shillings are distinctly stated to be equal to 120 pounds; in which case there must have been 60 shillings in each pound. But there is equally good evidence that five pennies was the value of the shilling; both before and after the time of Athelstan; and it has therefore been supposed that the shilling was depreciated by that king, and afterwards restored to its ancient value. In the laws of Canute the shilling appears clearly to be reckoned the forty-eighth part of the pound; and Ælfric, the grammarian, who wrote in this age, expressly states that there were five pennies in the shilling.

If the mancus ever was a coin, Mr. Ruding is of opinion that it became latterly merely a denomination of money of account. The commonly received etymology of the word, from the Latin manu cusum, struck with the hand (though this etymology may be doubted), would seem to favour the notion that it had been a coin at one time; but, as we find the mancus of silver mentioned as well as the mancus of gold, it must be concluded that the name came to be afterwards used as that simply of a certain sum, for it is improbable that any coin was in use of so large a size as a silver mancus would have been. The value of the mancus is stated by Ælfric to have been thirty pennies, in the same passage in which he states five pennies to have made a shilling. The mancus, therefore, contained six Saxon shillings, or was of the value of 675 grains troy of silver, being rather more than is contained in seven of our present shillings. It is observable that a gold coin, sometimes called a mancus, in other cases known by other names, circulated during the middle ages in many countries both of Europe and the East, the weight of which was 56 grains troy, which would be just about the weight of gold equivalent to thirty Saxon pennies, on the supposition, which other considerations render probable, that the relative value of gold and silver was then as twelve to one. Of this weight were the mancuses or ducats of Italy, Germany, France, Spain, and Holland, the sultani of Constantinople, the sequins of Barbary, and the sheriffs of Egypt.