The first great sum that I read of to be paid in easterlings was in the reign of Richard I., when Robert, Earl of Leicester, being prisoner in France, proffered for his ransom a thousand marks easterlings, notwithstanding the easterling pence were long before. The weight of the easterling penny may appear by divers statutes, namely, of weights and measures, made in the 51st of Henry III. in these words: “Thirty-two graines of wheat, drie and round, taken in the middest of the eare, shoulde be the weight of a starling penie, 20 of those pence should waye one ounce, 12 ounces a pound Troy.” It followeth in the statute eight pound to make a gallon of wine, and eight gallons a bushel of London measure, etc. Notwithstanding which statute, I find, in the 8th of Edward I., Gregorie Rokesley, mayor of London, being chief master or minister of the Kinge’s Exchange, or mintes, a new coin being then appointed, the pound of easterling money should contain as afore twelve ounces; to wit, fine silver, such as was then made into foil, and was commonly called silver of Guthurons lane,[73] eleven ounces, two easterlings, and one ferling or farthing, and the other seventeen pence ob. q.[74] to be alloy. Also, the pound of money ought to weigh twenty shillings and three pence by account; so that no pound ought to be over twenty shillings and three pence, nor less than twenty shillings and two pence by account; the ounce to weigh twenty pence, the penny weight twenty-four grains (which twenty-four by weight then appointed were as much as the former thirty-two grains of wheat), a penny force twenty-five grains and a half, the penny deble or feeble twenty-two grains and a half, etc.[75] Now for the penny easterling, how it took that name I think good briefly to touch. It hath been said, that Numa Pompilius, the second king of the Romans, commanded money first to be made, of whose name they were called _nummi_; and when copper pence, silver pence, and gold pence, were made, because every silver penny was worth ten copper pence, and every gold penny worth ten silver pence, the pence therefore were called in Latin, denarii, and oftentimes the pence are named of the matter and stuff of gold or silver. But the money of England was called of the workers and makers thereof; as the florin of gold is called of the Florentines, that were the workers thereof, and so the easterling pence took their name of the Easterlings which did first make this money in England, in the reign of Henry II. Thus have I set down according to my reading in antiquity of money matters, omitting the imaginations of late writers, of whom some have said easterling money to take that name of a star, stamped in the border or ring of the penny; other some of a bird called a star or starling stamped in the circumference; and other (more unlikely) of being coined at Strivelin or Starling, a town in Scotland, etc.