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

388 The Coins of Europe
that family, Jeanne of Wesemael, married Henry of Diest,
Seigneur of Stalle and Riviere. He issued coins with Dns.
de Rivia., and his widow with Dna. de Wismel. There
are evidences of the latter having had a very extensive
coinage of billon money.
The right of coinage was conceded by the Emperor
Louis IV. to the See of Liege as early as 908-9 but no
; money
anterior to the closing years of the same century
Liece.
has been recovered bearing certain indications of
belonging to this eventually very extensive series. The
first trace of a share of the bishops in the currency
is in the
appearance of a crozier as part of the type of a denier of
Otto III. About 995, and to the neighbourhood of that year,
we may not be far wrong in assigning the origin of the
regular succession of money, which survived down to 1792,
with the name and effigy of St. Lambert, the patron of the
city and diocese, under the authority of the dean and
chapter. There is even a pattern for a schelling in 1852 of
similar type. But the last prelate who struck autonomous
money is said to have been Jean Theodore of Bavaria,
i 744-63. There are coins of a rare and curious character
from two points of view : short disputed reigns, like those
of Lothaire de Hochsted (1191-94), Simon de Limbourg
(i 194), and Thierri de Perwez (1390), and interregnal issues
by the praesules or prevots of the See, as Andr de Cuyk
(1121-23) and Albert de Rethel (1191-94), of whom both
left coins, and the latter, one with the unusual reverse of a
horse tethered to a tree and the legend Eqvvs Venalis.
The beginning of the fourteenth century was for Liege, as
for other governments, the great era of revival and development,
and the prince-bishops adopted, both from Flanders
and Italy, the gold types of the mouton, peeter, and florin, of
which the last had been already long copied elsewhere, and
the no less ubiquitous and popular gros tournois of France
and ambrosino of Milan. The liards of the sixteenth century
are of special interest as exhibiting the likenesses of the
bishops one of Ernest of Bavaria, : i 5 84, retains the titles
of Due de Bouillon and Comte de Loos, which had been