THE COIN COLLECTOR - World eBook Library

THE COLLECTOR SERIES
the superior material and designs which distinguish the
circulating medium from this time till the civil troubles
under the Plantagenets. Under Alfred the halfpenny
reappeared for the first time since the reign of ^Edmund
of East Anglia ; but the innovation may be supposed
not to have met with favour, as we meet with no
examples beyond those struck by his successor Edward
the Elder and by Edward the Confessor. The half-
pence of Alfred were unknown till the Cuerdale find,
and specimens of other reigns may come to light.
The earliest Anglo-Saxon money was, like the majo-
rity of the British, uninscribed ; occasionally what ap-
pears to be the name of an individual occurs on the
sceattas ; there is even one ascribed to a king of Kent,
Ethelbert I. (568-615), with an indistinct legend ; but
in course of time the system prevailed of naming the
sovereign and the moneyer on opposite sides. Some-
times the former is omitted, and the Normans added the
places of mintage, which became under them extremely
numerous. It is deserving of remark that on several
of the Northumbrian pennies the Scandinavian element
manifests itself in the forms A'um/nka, A'unuk, or Commc,
for Rex.
The Anglo-Norman line closely adhered, from dip-
lomatic motives, to the monetary principle which
William I. found in force on his assumption of the
crown ; his common PAX type followed the precedent
of a Lincoln penny of Canute ;
and no material variation
occurred in the English currency down to the reign of
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