Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/420

 quantity of money the Conqueror took from Harold enabled him to be, in the words of his biographer, "incredibly liberal" to the Church of Rome: moreover, that some of the nobles had great wealth, may be inferred from the present of Earl Godwin to Hardicanute already alluded to, together with the other rich gifts which he bestowed upon the Church.

But the governing class and the great ecclesiastics must have had in those days the bulk of the wealth of the country in their hands; indeed, the limited extent of trade, and the character of the imports of the period, demonstrate plainly that such was the case. Silk, and similar expensive articles of dress, precious stones, perfumes, and other oriental luxuries, purchased in the ports of Italy or at Marseilles, are, with one or two extraordinary exceptions, the only items the historians of the period record as having been brought from foreign countries: these exceptions, strange to relate, consisted of portions of legs, arms, fingers, and toes, supposed to have belonged to canonized saints. It is almost impossible now to conceive that such articles constituted, at any period of English history, important items of her imports. There is, however, no doubt of the fact; and so high in estimation were such remains held, that Egelnoth, archbishop of Canterbury, is said to have purchased at Paris, on his return from Rome, an arm of St. Augustine for one hundred talents of silver and one talent of gold;