The Carlovingian systems of coinage had passed to England long before the Norman Conquest, displacing the old Norse and Saxon systems—the Norse, in which the Ore was of 20 silver penings = 1/8 marc or 1/12 lb., and the Saxon Sceatta of 40 Styca, usually equivalent to pence. The shilling, = 1/20 pound of silver pence, became established—‘xxx scyllinge penega,’ thirty shillings of pence (‘Saxon Chronicle,’ 775). The Norman Conquest made no appreciable change in the English customary coinage. The Tower pound of silver which the Normans found established was coined into 240 of the ‘English peny called a sterling,’ each weighing 22-1/2 grains instead of the 25 grains of Charlemagne’s sterlings. Twelve pence made a shilling of 20 to the pound, and twenty pence or pennyweights made an ounce of 12 to the mint-pound. England soon followed France, but much more slowly, in the usual dwindling of the weight of coins, as the king, pushed for money, ordered his moneyers to melt down the silver pennies and recoin them of lower weight. They remained at 22-1/2 grains down to the time of Edward I. Edward III’s first pennies were of 22-1/4 grains, but in the 18th year of his reign they weighed 20-1/4 grains, in the 20th year 20 grains, and after the 27th year he made the pound of silver yield 300 pennies at 18 grains. He also coined groats (great sterlings or grosses). Silver halfpence (mayles) and farthings (ferlynges) were coined, and a statute specially ordered that no sterling halfpenny nor farthing be molten ‘for to make vessel or any other thing by goldsmiths nor others.’ At this time, if we may believe the Statute of Labourers, one penny was the usual daily pay of the farm-labourer, but mowers were to have fivepence by the acre or the day. Prices of farm-produce were fixed. A penny would buy a chicken or six pounds of bread, 2 pence a fowl, 4 pence a goose. The diminution in the weight of the penny was slow and did not affect wholesale dealings in which payment was usually made by weight.[35] Footnote 35: Clipping the pennies, against which crime frequent statutes threatened punishment, affected the poor who paid and were paid by tale, not by weight. It afforded a pretext for occasionally raiding the Jews and plundering their store of coin, always found of course to have been clipped. In all but retail transactions payment might be agreed to be by weight. In Stephen’s reign the land-revenue of countries was farmed out. The sheriff or ‘fermour’ of Wiltshire and Dorsetshire paid into the treasury £454 10_s._ by weight (ad pensum) and £262 4_s._ by tale (numero). He probably picked out the full-weight coins for payment by tale, and had to take (as perhaps he received) weight-value for the rest.