The numismatic chronicle and journal of the Royal Numismatic Society

Y.
ON THE RESIDENT CHARACTER OF THE OFFICE OF
MONETARIUS IN SAXON TIMES.
IN Canon Assheton Pownall's paper on the Stafford Mint
in Vol. XX. N.S. of the Chronicle, p. 66, he again opens
up the question of the itinerant services rendered by the
Saxon monetarii, and he dwells on the assistance which
may be obtained in correctly attributing specimens of
their handiwork from the similarity or identity in the
names of moneyers of neighbouring towns.
Naturally we cannot, as he says, pretend to be positive
about so speculative a question, and it is much to be
regretted that we have no documentary evidence on such
important points in the elucidation of the question as the
position of the mint-masters, by whose authority, under
what conditions, and in what circumstances they issued a
coinage. But we have, nevertheless, a very large field of
inquiry from which to draw our conclusions in the
number and variety of the coins of the Confessor that
have come down to us, as we know of more than 12,000
coins of 12 distinct types, minted at 58 different towns, and
bearing mpre than 300 different moneyers' names ;
and I
cannot but think that the general character of the evidence
they adduce points to a local and stationar}^ rather than
to a perambulating and ubiquitous, nature of the office.