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

2O
The Coins of Europe
The constant intercourse of the sea-rovers of the North,
by whatever name they might be known Saxons, Danes,
or Jutes with the British Isles might serve to account for
the introduction into England of such money as they had in
use from time to time and the loan of suggestions from
it. In the course of their dealings and depredations these
adventurers naturally came in contact with the money of
different countries, and parted. with it in exchange; and a
second channel for this sort of influence was France, whence
the Britons had been borrowers of numismatic patterns and
symbols from the most remote period, and with which there
was a steady commerce. The money coined by Pepin le
Bref and Charlemagne in the second half of the eighth
century, and that issued by the latter on an improved or at
least altered model toward the close of the reign, were
equally of Teutonic origin, and with the various Merovingian
types and even certain hints from the inscribed British gold
pieces of Cunobeline, Verica, and others, constituted the
material from which the Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, and,
last of all, the successors of Canute II. in Denmark, derived
their own productions. The coinage of the kings of Mercia
exhibits in a very marked manner the diversified form of
the Cross, till the original conception was lost and forgotten ;
and there can be no reasonable doubt that the Anglo-Danish
monarchs or their mint-masters in the eleventh century were
indebted to English prototypes for those artistic and graceful
pennies which belong to the reigns of Magnus and Sweyn
II., and which vary alike from the Teutonic taste and from
the primitive Swedish mintage.
Italy, like Germany, is susceptible of treatment under
two grand sections, the Northern, including Lombardy, and
the Southern, comprising Sicily, or in other words, the Two
Sicilies, and with these Savoy may be most appropriately
grouped, not only on geographical and political, but on
artistic, grounds.
In Northern Italy we have to deal with at least four
classes of coinage
: i ,
the money issued in the name of the
Gothic, Lombard, and other early conquerors 2, the
;