Secondly, the change in value by the greater plenty of money, which has reduced the same weight of silver to ten times less value, compared to commodities; and consequently a pound sterling to the thirtieth part of the ancient value.

Thirdly, the fewer people and less industry which were then to be found in every European kingdom.

This circumstance made even the thirtieth part of the sum more difficult to levy, and caused any sum to have more than thirty times greater weight and influence, both abroad and at home, than in our times; in the same manner that a sum, a hundred thousand pounds, for instance, is at present more difficult to levy in a small state, such as Bavaria, and can produce greater effects on such a small community than on England.
This last difference is not easy to be calculated; but, allowing that England has now six times more industry, and three times more people than it had at the conquest, and for some reigns after that period, we are upon that supposition to conceive, taking all circumstances together, every sum of money mentioned by historians, as if it were multiplied more than a hundred fold above a sum of the same denomination at present.
In the Saxon times, land was divided equally among all the male children of the deceased, according to the custom of gavelkind.

The practice of entails is to be found in those times.[*] Land was chiefly of two kinds, bockland, or land held by book or charter, which was regarded as full property, and descended to the heirs of the possessor; and folkland, or the land held by the ceorles and common people, who were removable at pleasure, and were, indeed, only tenants during the will of their lords.
The first attempt which we find in England to separate the ecclesiastical from the civil jurisdiction, was that law of Edgar by which all disputes among the clergy were ordered to be carried before the bishop.[**] The penances were then very severe; but as a man could buy them off with money, or might substitute others to perform them, they lay easy upon the rich.[***] With regard to the manners of the Anglo-Saxons, we can say little, but that they were in general a rude, uncultivated people, ignorant of letters, unskilled in the mechanical arts, untamed to submission under law and government, addicted to intemperance, riot, and disorder.

Their best quality was their military courage, which yet was not supported by discipline or conduct.