THE COIN COLLECTOR - World eBook Library

TERMINOLOGY
The variety known as the demy appears to be merely
an inaccurate division of the relative weights 40, 30,
and 20 grs. under Robert II.—a standard which was
altered and adjusted under James I. to 50-53 grs., and
the half for the lion and half-lion respectively, (ii.) A
billon coin of Mary I., 1555-58 (3rd coinage), other-
wise known as a hardhead, a word corrupted from the
French hardit.
Lion in the hedge—The well-known type of the lion
in the hedge, subsequently modified and lost in the
substitution of a man for the beast, occurs in the
Flemish coinage of the fifteenth century. Its germ is
to be sought presumably in the universal practice of
venery or hunting. The hart enclosed in a pale, or
lodged, was the badge of Richard II. of England, and
was inherited from his mother, Joan of Kent, consort
of the Black Prince, and sole heiress of Edmund Plan-
tagenet. (Comp. Hazlitt, " Coins of Europe, 1-
'
p. 304.)
Lis or fleur-de-lis—The almost universal adjunct of
the older French money. Its origin is a matter of great
uncertainty, and it has been even doubted whether the
representations on ancient buildings and sculpture refer
to a flower at all. It has also been suggested that the
name was associated with that of Louis or Clovis, quasi
fleur de Luce or Louis.
Litmus—The crooked staff" used by the Roman
augurs ; also a term used for a kind of trumpet with a
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