III.III A bit of fun...........Did you know ?
The phrase "to pay through the nose" [refering to exhorbitant pricing] comes from the Viking practice of slitting the noses of anyone who would not or could not afford to pay their tribute !!
By the reign of king Eadgar [959-975] the penny was so overvalued that 65lb of money = 50lb of silver, bullion weight. The penny was far too light but was still circulating as legal tender.
There are 16 entries in the Domesday Book refering to moneyers.
In the 10th/11th century there were an estimated 5 million pennies circulating in England. Aethelred II [978-1016] payed over 40 million pennies in Danegeld. THIS IS EQUIVALENT TO AROUND ONE HUNDRED MILLION POUNDS TODAY. WITH PERHAPS THE PURCHASING POWER OF CLOSE TO ONE BILLION POUNDS STERLING.
The Norman mint of Dunwich is now under the North Sea.
There have been more Anglo-Saxon pennies found in Scandinavia than England. This is due to coin hoards of Danegeld.
Archbishop St. Dunstan once refused to celebrate mass until three dishonest moneyers had been deprived of their right hands.
Until 1180 it was expressly forbidden for Winchester moneyers to work in the same building. This was thought to prevent dishonesty.
In 1124 king Henry I judged his 150 moneyers, mutilating 94 of them for debasing the coinage. They each lost their right hand and one testicle.
In late Saxon times the penalty for coining "outside the walls" [ie. not in a lawful town or city] was death.
In 973 king Eadgar reformed the coinage and introduced a royal portrait as standard on the obverse of coins.
King Aethelstan [924-939] was the first monarch to mint coins with a crowned portrait. Until this reign kings were diademed or bare-headed on English coins.
William the Conqueror was so impressed with the standard of the English coinage [by far the best in Europe] that he allowed it to remain in place. The same family of late Saxon royal jewellers produced the coin dies of William I also.
King Cnut was the first Danish monarch to mint coins. He did so in England first, then exported English moneyers to Denmark to establish a mint there.
The most expensive Anglo-Saxon coin ever sold is the Coenwulf gold Mancus, discovered in 2001. It was bought by the British Museum in 2005 for £357, 832. www.scvhistory.com/scvhistory/signal/coins/worden-coinage0106a.htm
The only Anglo-Saxon queen permitted to mint coins in her own name was Cynethryth, wife of king Offa of Mercia [757-796].
The broad flan, thin penny [as opposed to the sceat] was probably introduced by the transitory king of Kent, Heaberht [c.774].
Anglo-Saxon coins were produced onto squares of silver...then trimmed round.
A pair of coin dies in the late Saxon/Norman period consisted of one obverse die and two reverse dies, as these broke easier.
An Anglo-Saxon gold Mancus was worth thirty silver pennies. The silver penny represented one days pay for a skilled craftsman. It was a huge sum of money to the ordinary peasant.
Under the laws of Cnut witnesses had to be present for any transaction involving more than four pennies.
In the tenth century a horse could be valued at up to [the enormous sum of] 120 pennies. You could buy an ox for a mancus, a cow at twenty pence, a pig at ten pence, a sheep at a shilling [here being four pennies] and a goat for two pence.
There were more mints operational in England after the Norman conquest [over seventy] than there are active in the whole world today. Over one hundred countries entrust the modern Royal Mint to coin their money.
Domesday Book names twenty eight mint towns.
The largest hoard of pennies of Norman England was found at Beauworth, Hampshire in 1833. The hoard contained at lease eight thousand coins. Sixty five mints are represented. Prior to the discovery of this hoard the PAXS type of William I was his rarest type. It is now his most common by far.
Spink's Coins Of England and the U.K. is one of the most frequently stolen library books in the country.
- Posted by dragonbloodaxe on 28/10/2006.
- dragonbloodaxe's site
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