The numismatic chronicle and journal of the Royal Numismatic Society

108 G. C. BROOKE.
temporary
with the uncountermarked coins of the
same type the first of Stephen.
It seems to me not unnatural to attribute this
countermarking, or erasure, of obverse dies to an
intention to put the die out of action, in just the same
way as dies at the present day, if kept, are obliterated
by some mark in order to prevent them being used
tor forgery.
I am inclined, therefore, to assign the
countermarking of these dies, not to an enemy who
had obtained possession
of them, but to the original
and lawful holder of them, that is to say,
to assume
that the monetariw or custos cuneorum in this way
rendered his dies unfit for further service in fear of
their capture by the king's enemies. By the obliteration
of the obverse, or standard, dies the reverse, or
trussel, dies would be rendered useless, and so the
enemy would not, if he captured the mint, have easy
means at his disposal of imitating the king's coinage.
One can well imagine occasions among the many
raids and sieges of this period (such, for instance, as
Gloucester's attack on Nottingham in 1140) when such
a danger may have been imminent. Whether it would
have been easier in an emergency of this sort to destroy
if so, the
the dies completely, I am not prepared to say ;
method of obliteration may perhaps have been preferred
in order to retain the alternative of using the
erased dies again in case they were not seized by
the enemy or of denouncing the currency of the
countermarked money in case of their capture.
How-
ever this may be, it is evident that, if my suggestion
is right, these dies were put to use after the erasure
was made, whether on behalf of the king or his enemies
it is impossible to say ; in some cases the good weight