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THE COIN COLLECTOR - World eBook Library

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<strong>THE</strong> <strong>COLLECTOR</strong> SERIES<br />

the superior material and designs which distinguish the<br />

circulating medium from this time till the civil troubles<br />

under the Plantagenets. Under Alfred the halfpenny<br />

reappeared for the first time since the reign of ^Edmund<br />

of East Anglia ; but the innovation may be supposed<br />

not to have met with favour, as we meet with no<br />

examples beyond those struck by his successor Edward<br />

the Elder and by Edward the Confessor. The half-<br />

pence of Alfred were unknown till the Cuerdale find,<br />

and specimens of other reigns may come to light.<br />

The earliest Anglo-Saxon money was, like the majo-<br />

rity of the British, uninscribed ; occasionally what ap-<br />

pears to be the name of an individual occurs on the<br />

sceattas ; there is even one ascribed to a king of Kent,<br />

Ethelbert I. (568-615), with an indistinct legend ; but<br />

in course of time the system prevailed of naming the<br />

sovereign and the moneyer on opposite sides. Some-<br />

times the former is omitted, and the Normans added the<br />

places of mintage, which became under them extremely<br />

numerous. It is deserving of remark that on several<br />

of the Northumbrian pennies the Scandinavian element<br />

manifests itself in the forms A'um/nka, A'unuk, or Commc,<br />

for Rex.<br />

The Anglo-Norman line closely adhered, from dip-<br />

lomatic motives, to the monetary principle which<br />

William I. found in force on his assumption of the<br />

crown ; his common PAX type followed the precedent<br />

of a Lincoln penny of Canute ;<br />

and no material variation<br />

occurred in the English currency down to the reign of<br />

168

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