THE COIN COLLECTOR - World eBook Library

UNITED KINGDOM
Of the mints we seem to hear nothing beyond Rich-
borough, Silehester, Verulam, Colchester, Cirencester, the
place apparently indicated by the abbreviated form Sego,
the capital (?) of the Boduni, probably intended in the
Bodu of coins, to which probably may be added Canter-
bury, if not London. But if the so-called Merovin-
gian or Merwing monetary system found favour on the
English side of the Channel, the natural result would be
that every local centre, however inconsiderable, struck
its own coins ;
and such a law might, as in the case of the
large family of Merovingian products, readily facilitate
numberless and infinitesimal variations and gradations
of type and style.
There is valid evidence that, wherever the coins were
fabricated, the authorities learned the utility or neces-
sity of instituting by degrees some more or less strict
regulations in regard to the weight of the money, and
that there was a well-understood divisional principle
of moieties and thirds or quarters—one borrowed from
the later Roman solid? ; and a comparison of specimens,
allowing for wear and tear, supports the view that what
may be taken to be the money of the middle and best
period was adjusted with tolerable care to the appointed
standard. The Jersey find of 1820 consisted of Gaulish
rather than British money, and of that in silver of low
alloy ; the two classes which occurred weighed respec-
tively about 100 and 25 grs. The British metrological
system would be borrowed from Gaul.
It is perhaps not usually recognised or realised to
the full extent, that a monetary system prevailed in
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