Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/385

 9* s. iv. Nov. 25, -99.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 431 LONDON, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER tS, 1899. CONTENTS.—No. 100. NOTES :—Origin of the English Coinage, 431—' Dictionary of National Biography,'433—Trafalgar— A Surviving Word —Date of the Death of King Alfred, 435—" A good penny- worth "—South African Names — " Frail'' — " Cord- wainer"—"Hiati," 436. QUERIES :—" Ingate " — Wm. Tucksey—'• Ltef-hebber "— Weather-lore — Goodere Family-Stafford Castle—Short Family —Right of Sanctuary, 437 — Entwisle Family- Story about an Ancient University—Sir E. W. Brecknock — "Nimmet" — "The Great Oath" —Eyre and Blount. Families—Silver Ring—"Memorize"—Rubens's Portrait of the Marchesa Grimaldi —Wogan Browne, 438—Climate and Character —"None"—"White-night"—"To mend the fire," 439. REPLIES : —Wordsworthiana, 439 —Roos and Cromwell Families, 440—Aldgate and Whitechapel, 441—Danish Place-names in the Wirral—"Truth is the daughter of Time "—Leprosy of Houses—Relic of Old London—'Lea Eglises de Palestine ' — " Parliamentary language " — St. Erth, 442—Clerks of the Board of Green Cloth—" Three Pound Twelve" —Coal Folk-lore — Hide from Paris to Fontainebleau — Pronunciation of "Water," 443—Prince Charles Stuart-The Montreux Inscription—" Orsidue "— Earls of St. Pol, 444—Instrumental Choir—" To Godfrey " —Ladbroke: Pery i Twige — " Tiger "=a Boy Groom— Madame Kistori, 445—Dieskau— Mr. Kipling's "Lucia"— "Head and harigald money "—" Ce canaille de D—"— Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset—Bellriugers' Rimes, 448 —"Persimmon "—Musical Epitaph—Carriage of a Sword- belt, 447—Parry Family—Holy Communion—"Feat"— " Ginns " in the Fylde, 448. NOTES ON BOOKS :-Colvin's 'Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson' —Willcock's 'Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cro- martie'—Heckethorn's ' London Souvenirs '—Leighton's 'Life and Books.' Ifot.es. THE ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH COINAGE. On the 15th of April I published a letter in the Athenaeum entitled ' Gavelkind and the Family House,' in which I showed that a relationship, or ratio, once existed between the size of a peasant's dwelling-house and the quantity of arable land, or arable land and meadow, which he held. Houses were erected in bays of 16 ft. in length, and were estimated or valued by the number of bays which they contained. They were measured by a perch, or rod, of 16 ft. in length, and this was a unit of measurement. This length of bay was not an arbitrary quantity. It arose from the fact that the normal yoke of oxen required 16 ft. for their standing-room, and this length, having been fixed by the yoke, was adopted not only in oxhouses, but in every kind of rural building. The discovery which I claimed in my letter to have made was that there once existed a rule by which six acres of land were apportioned to each bay of a peasant's dwelling-house—or, in other words, a rule that the length of his house must be exactly proportioned to the size of his holding. Thus a virgate of thirty acres* was held with a virgate, Ate, was not the same in all places. But the house of five bays, which together measured 80 ft. in length. It has since occurred to me that the monetary units of pounds, shillings, and pence were related to the bays. As oxen once counted for money, it would be reasonable and convenient to estimate a man's wealth by the space required for their accommoda- tion, and finally by the whole contents of his house-room. It would be easier, moreover, to tax a man, or to estimate his wealth, by the number of his bays, or by the whole con- tents of his house-room, than by the actual number of his oxen, for the bays were a fixed quantity, whilst the numberof oxen may have varied from time to time. It would be more reasonable to tax a man in this way than to tax him, as was once the case, by the number of windows in his house. Further, as the bays and acres were accurately correlated, the bays would form an accurate basis of assessment, and would be more easily esti- mated than the numerous scattered strips in the open fields of which the holdings were composed. Instead of saying that the length of a- peasant's house was exactly proportioned to the size of his holding, it would probably be more correct to say that the superficial measurement of his house was exactly pro- portioned to the size of his holding. And if we assume the accuracy of this last-mentioned similitude of ratios — or, in other words, if we assume that the bay had a normal breadth as well as a normal length—some remarkable consequences follow. But before going further I will here give a table, founded on the evidence mentioned in my letter to the Athencevm, which will exhibit the relationship of the acres to the bays, as well as the relationship of the bays to the monetary units:— Length of _,.. , „ House in Holding. Acres. Bays. g. d. Feet. Hide 120 ... 20 ... 20 0 ... 320 Half hide ... 60 ... 10 ...10 0 ... 160 Virgate 30 ... 5 ... 5 0 ... 80 Bovate 15 ... 2* ... 2 6 ... 40 Half bovate*... 7J ... 1} ... 1 3 ... 20 6 ... 1 ... 10 ... 16 I now_regret that in taking measurements of bays in old farmhouses or farm buildings variations are nearly always multiples of 6"—as 18, 24. The normal virgate, as fouDd in the south of England, was thirty acres. mates, were not actually erected. Thus, if a man held a half bovate, the distance between the forks of which "his cottage was built was 20 ft. This is found both in surveys and actual examples.
 * It must be remembered that the size of the
 * Quarters of bays, though occurring in esti-