On lifiendes Godes naman. ne ðearf ic N. sceatt ne scylling. ne pænig ne pæniges weorð. (s. 11) In the name of the living God I owe not to N. _sceatt nor scilling_, not penny nor penny’s worth. Surely in both cases the phrase ‘sceatt ne scilling’ refers to coins or units of account of two denominations in current use, as in the Kentish laws. It is even possible perhaps to find an illustration of the reckoning in sceatts and scillings in the well-known passage in the ‘Scald’s Tale’ already quoted. se me beag forgeaf on tham siex hund wæs smætes goldes gescyred sceatta scilling-rime. He me a bracelet gave on which six hundred was of beaten gold scored of sceatts in scillings reckoned. If these words may be properly translated literally ‘Of sceatts in scillings reckoned’[288] and are taken to mean ‘600 sceatts in scillings reckoned,’ the phrase accords very closely with the method of reckoning in the Salic laws--‘so many hundred denarii, _i.e._ so many solidi.’ Returning to the sceatts and scillings of the Laws of Ethelbert, the most obvious suggestion would be that the currency in Kent was similar to that on the other side of the Channel under the Merovingian princes. The two courts were so closely connected by Ethelbert’s marriage, and probably by trade intercourse, that the most likely guess, at first sight, would be that the Kentish scætts were silver tremisses and the Kentish scillings gold solidi like those of the Lex Salica. We have seen that the Merovingian currency was mainly in _gold tremisses_, and as many of the 100 gold tremisses contained in the celebrated ‘Crondale find’ are believed by numismatists to have been coined in Kent, by English moneyers, the currency of gold tremisses in England is directly confirmed, though the silver currency seems very soon to have superseded it.[289] [Sidenote: The scilling of 20 scætts = one ounce of silver.] At the date of Ethelbert’s Laws (A.D. 596) the Merovingian currency was still mainly gold--_i.e._ gold tremisses, three of which went to the gold solidus of the Salic Laws. And if the scilling of Ethelbert, like the solidus of the Franks, had been a solidus of forty denarii we might have concluded at once that Ethelbert’s scilling, like the Merovingian solidus, was a solidus of three gold tremisses, or forty silver sceatts. But the facts apparently will not allow us to come to this conclusion. Schmid has shown--I think, conclusively--by inference from certain passages in Ethelbert’s Laws, that the Kentish scilling was of _twenty_ scætts instead of forty.[290] We therefore must deal with the Kentish scilling on its own evidence.