ats, fines, reliefs, and other casual profits to a great
value, amounted to near four hundred thousand pounds a year [t]; a sum
which, if all circumstances be attended to, will appear wholly
incredible. A pound in that age, as we have already observed,
contained three times the weight of silver that it does at present;
and the same weight of silver, by the most probable computation, would
purchase near ten times more of the necessaries of life, though not in
the same proportion of the finer manufactures. This revenue,
therefore, of William, would be equal to at least nine or ten millions
at present; and as that prince had neither fleet nor army to support,
the former being only an occasional expense, and the latter being
maintained without any charge to him by his military vassals, we must
thence conclude, that no emperor or prince, in any age or nation, can
be compared to the Conqueror for opulence and riches. This leads us
to suspect a great mistake in the computation of the historian:
though, if we consider that avarice is always imputed to William, as
one of his vices, and that having by the sword rendered himself master
of all the lands in the kingdom, he would certainly in the partition
retain a great proportion for his own share; we can scarcely be guilty
of any error in asserting, that perhaps no king of England was ever
more opulent, was more able to support by his revenue the splendour
and magnificence of a court, or could bestow more on his pleasures, or
in liberalities to his servants and favourites [u].
[FN [s] West's inquiry into the manner of creating peers, p. 24. [t]
Order. Vital. p. 523. He says one thousand and sixty pounds and some
odd shillings and pence a day. [u] Fortescue, de Dom. reg. et
politic. cap. 111.]

[MN The new forest.]
There was one pleasure to which William, as well as all the Normans
and ancient Saxons, was extremely addicted, and that was hunting; but
this pleasure he indulged more at the expense of his unhappy subjects,
whose interests he always disregarded, than to the loss or diminution
of his own revenue. Not content with those large forests which former
kings possessed in all parts of England, he resolved to make a new
forest near Winchester, the usual place of his residence; and for that
purpose he laid waste the country in Hampshire for an extent of thirty
miles, expelled the inhabitants from their houses, seized their
property, even demolished churches and convents,