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

Descriptive Oiitline of the Coinages of Europe 491
sources of the fame which the house will always continue to
enjoy. Its genesis was French but its heroes were
;
Hollanders. The earliest coins are deniers of Guillaume,
1182-1219. But the most interesting remains belong to
William the Silent, Maurice of Nassau, and William Henry,
afterward William III. of Great Britain. A link between
the old home of the family and the theatre of its historical
exploits
is found in the retention of the fleur-de-lis in the
arms, sometimes with, sometimes without, the cornets. A
lo-stuiver piece of 1749, otherwise anonymous, has a lis on
the pillar on obverse. A cornet presents itself on a bronze
penny of the Orange Free State, 1874.
Even in the capital itself the regent Bedford (John
with the Wooden Sword) exercised sovereign authority
of inter-
during many years, and struck coins significant
rupted or divided autonomy. In Avignon we recognise the
temporary political phenomenon which produced a lacuna
in the papal numismatic series at home, and transports
us to a foreign territory for the pontiffs from 1309 to 1408.
The Viennois falls within the present category, because in the
tenth century Vienne itself formed the home of a Venetian
trading colony, which had its own quarter. The coins struck
for Dauphiny after the union or cession by the independent
rulers in 1343 bore the distinguishing mark of two dolphins.
A billon douzain of Louis XII. (1497-1515) has the
quartered shield of France and Dauphiny surmounted by a
crowned lis.
In an almost equally striking yet totally different manner
the three localities indicated in the margin signalised them-
Saint-Martin de
selves b Y the Production of types, which
Tours. became generic or standard, and were
copied far beyond their own fron tier, and
l.
even the boundaries of France. The gros
tournois was not only the first step taken toward a development
of the coinage after the return of Louis IX. from the
Holy Land in 1250-51, but became the model for similar
denominations or value in several parts of Europe, where the
belief in its acceptability or the force of servile imitation led