W. C a r e w H a z l i t t Coinage of the European Continent

3 1 6 The Coins of Europe
in continental catalogues. The original currency was on the
bracteate system one belonging to the Plauen line has
:
Hadupm. for Henricus Advocatus de Plauen, indicating the
lay administrator of that province. There is a great risk of
confusion among the more archaic Reuss money through
the fifty or sixty persons of the name of Henry who
have borne the title, and, again, through the anonymous
character of many of the pieces. On some of those struck
at Schleiz we observe the head of the aurochs or bull, a type
so prevalent in Mecklemburgh, and here it occurs with the
addition of a flying fish above it or in the hands of a bearer,
be intended for the Count of Lobdeburg, issuer of
who may
the coin ; the symbol seems to point to an early religious
or sacrificial idea, which was once very widely spread, and
seems to have travelled westward from Moldavia or Bogdana,
where we observe the same thing on the money of the
mediaeval voivodes. We get the flying fish again at Bergau
in Saxony.
With the intricate territorial divisions and periodical
readjustments of this domain we are of course unable to deal
at length. In i 560 the house, tracing its
Urunswick-Limeburg. .
Grubenhagen. rise from the earlier half of the thirteenth
cen
Calender"' tury, branched into two stems, Dannen-
Wolfenbuttel. berg and Liineburg, subsequently Hanover.
The Celle line commenced in 1546, and
merged in that of Calenberg in 1705. The Liineburg one
eventually surpassed all the others in weight and consequence,
owing to the succession of the Elector George Louis in 1714
to the throne of Great Britain as the next heir of the
Electress Sophia.
From a numismatic point of view, however, the
leading
consideration is the relationship of the duchy to the bordering
or allied coinages before it acquired an independent
existence, and the probability seems to be that its currency
was at first in common with that of Saxony, and emanated
from the mints at Liineburg and Ebsdorf or Ebsdorp in the
vicinity. The primitive denarii with the name of Bernhard
(973-1010) afford no clue to the region of origin ;
but there