THE COIN COLLECTOR - World eBook Library

THE COLLECTOR SERIES
rulers of Britain, numismatic-ally speaking, were not
only faint and slow, but liable to interruption ; and it
was not till England came into contact with Flemish
workmanship and taste, under the later Flantagenets,
by commercial and other relationships, that the cur-
rency assumed an aspect worthy of the rank of the
country in other respects. The Anglo-Saxons obeyed
the principle, so characteristic of a barbarous people,
of copying every variety of model, in general with in-
different success, and of these imitations there were
often degraded counterfeits.
There seems to be a fair probability that, as time
goes on, many important discoveries will be made in this
series, if not in the British. The exhumation in 1868
of the gold tremisses at Crondale, Hants, conclusively
shews how near to our feet, as it were, lie the means
of augmenting and revising our state of knowledge
respecting the numismatic transactions of remote ages
in this island, no less than the constant and intimate
relationship between the English and their Continental
neighbours.
The coins of the Heptarchy, to our knowledge of
which large and important additions have been made
in recent times, both in the way of discovery and
appropriation, succeeded not immediately to those of
the Britons, but to a very numerous and varied class of
silver currency termed sceatta, from the Anglo-Saxon
sceattan, to cut. These pieces resemble the British in
their imitative character, and appear to be almost
invariably efforts on the part of engravers superior to
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