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This article traces the history of the English penny from 1066 to 1154.
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This article traces the history of the English penny from 1066 to 1154.
Following the Norman Conquest, William the Conqueror continued the Anglo-Saxon coinage system. As a penny was a fairly large unit of currency at the time, when small change was needed a penny would be cut in half or into quarters at the mint of issue. Most pennies of Kings William I and II show a front-facing bust of the king on the obverse (which was a departure from the Anglo-Saxon kings, who mostly used a sideways-facing bust), surrounded by a legend, usually PILLEMUS REX, PILLEM REX ANGLOR, PILLEM REX AN, PILLELM REX, PILLEM R (King William, or William King of the English— The P may have been a late usage of the letter wynn, a P-shaped rune which had the sound value of a "w"). The reverse of the coin usually showed some form of cross, surrounded by the legend identifying the moneyer and mint.
Moneyers were personally responsible for maintaining the weight (at this time, 20 to 22 grains, 1.3 to 1.6 grams) and the silver fineness of the coins they produced — there are several recorded instances of moneyers who produced short-weight coins being mutilated or occasionally executed. Although there was only a small amount of space on the reverse, the moneyer's "identification details" were considered more important than the mint and were not often abbreviated (although often 'mis-spelt'). The moneyer's name would appear after a small cross, and is usually followed by "ON" (of) and the town's name. During the reign of William I (1066–1087) the demand for coins was so high that there were about 70 mints active; over 50 were active at the start of William II's reign in 1087, but only 34 were still in operation at his death in 1100.
During the reign of the first two Norman kings, mints were located in Barnstaple, Bath, Bedford, Bedwyn, Bridport, Bristol, Bury St Edmunds, Cambridge, Canterbury, Cardiff, Chester, Chichester, Christchurch, Colchester, Cricklade, Derby, Devitum (probably St David's, South Wales), Dorchester, Dover, Durham, Exeter, Gloucester, Guildford, Hastings, Hereford, Hertford, Huntingdon, Hythe, Ilchester, Ipswich, Launceston, Leicester, Lewes, Lincoln, London, Maldon, Malmesbury, Marlborough, Northampton, Norwich, Nottingham, Oxford, Peterborough, Pevensey, Rhuddlan, Rochester, Romney, Salisbury, Sandwich, Shaftesbury, Shrewsbury, Southwark, Stafford, Stamford, Steyning, Sudbury, Tamworth, Staffordshire, Taunton, Thetford, Totnes, Wallingford, Wareham, Warwick, Watchet, Wilton, Winchcombe, Winchester, Worcester, and York.
During the relatively long reign of King Henry I (1100–1135) the penny remained the chief denomination, although round halfpennies and quarter pennies were introduced [these are mentioned in contemporary accounts] which proved very unpopular and only about twelve specimens (of halfpence, and no round quarters) are known to exist today. Fifteen major types of penny were produced, at around 54 mints which were intermittently active throughout the reign. The quality of the coins in the early part of the reign was poor, as the moneyers made a large profit by producing underweight coins or coins of debased fineness. In 1124 Henry called all 150 moneyers to Winchester and called them to account for their activities — 94 of them were convicted of issuing sub-standard coins and were mutilated, their right hands and one testicle being cut off, as a result of which the quality of coins improved for most of the remainder of his reign. The basic design of the coins remained the same as before with the obverse inscriptions variously being HENRICUS, HENRICUS R, HENRI R, HENRI RE, HENRI REX, HENRY REX, HENRICUS REX, HENRICUS REX A—Henry, King Henry, Henry King of England.[ citation needed ]
During the reign of King Henry I, mints were located in Barnstaple, Bath, Bedford, Bristol, Bury St Edmunds, Cambridge, Canterbury, Cardiff, Carlisle, Chester, Chichester, Christchurch, Colchester, Derby, Dorchester, Dover, Durham, Exeter, Gloucester, Hastings, Hereford, Huntingdon, Ilchester, Ipswich, Launceston, Leicester, Lewes, Lincoln, London, Northampton, Norwich, Nottingham, Oxford, Pembroke, Pevensey, Rochester, Romney, Salisbury, Sandwich, Shaftesbury, Shrewsbury, Southampton, Southwark, Stafford, Stamford, Sudbury, Tamworth, Taunton, Thetford, Totnes, Wallingford, Wareham, Warwick, Watchet, Wilton, Winchcombe, Winchester, Worcester, and York.
One of the largest hoards of coins of Henry I was the Lincoln Melandry Hoard found in February 1972. This provided many new examples of coins minted by previously undocumented moneyers for the later issues of Henry I's reign.
The period following the death of King Henry I is known as The Anarchy. Henry's only legitimate son and heir had been drowned in 1120 in the White Ship disaster, so he had decided that he wished his daughter Matilda to succeed him. When he died, Matilda, also known as the Empress Maud, was in Normandy and her cousin Stephen of Blois managed to get back to London before she did, and claimed the throne - with the support of many barons who were unprepared for the novel idea of a woman ruler. Matilda and Stephen set up rival courts in Bristol and London and proceeded to issue coins from the mints under their control while the political unrest continued for the better part of 20 years. Stephen won the political battle, but when his own son and heir, Eustace, died in 1153 he agreed that Matilda's son Henry would succeed him.
Many of the coins produced during the Anarchy are of poor quality.
There are approximately 5 principal varieties of coins produced by Stephen's mints, normally containing the legend STIEFNE, STIEFNE R, STIEFNE RE, or STIEFNE REX, but one issue bears the legend PERERIC which cannot be translated but is thought to have been constructed by the moneyers to look like the previous reign's HENRICUS, so they could disassociate themselves from the conflict and hedge their bets about who would win, while still providing the required number of new coins.
Stephen's coins were minted at Bedford, Bramber, Bristol, Bury St Edmunds, Cambridge, Canterbury, Cardiff, Carlisle, Castle Rising, Chester, Chichester, Cipen (possibly Ipswich), Colchester, Corbridge, Derby, Dorchester, Dover, Durham, Eden, Exeter, Gloucester, Hastings, Hedon near Hull, Hereford, Huntingdon, Ipswich, Launceston, Leicester, Lewes, Lincoln, London, Newcastle, Northampton, Norwich, Nottingham, Oxford, Pembroke, Peterborough, Pevensey, Rye, Salisbury, Sandwich, Shaftesbury, Shrewsbury, Southampton, Southwark, Stafford, Steyning, Sudbury, Swansea, Tamworth, Taunton, Thetford, Tutbury, Wareham, Warwick, Watchet, Wilton, Winchester, Worcester, and York.
Matilda's coins tend to show a cruder style than Stephen's regular issues. The obverse legend is MATILDIS IMP—Empress Matilda, MATILDIS COMITISSA—Countess Matilda, or simply MATILDIS—Matilda. [1]
Matilda's coins were minted at Bristol, Cardiff, Gloucester, Oxford, and Wareham, and possibly also at Calne and Canterbury.
Stephen, often referred to as Stephen of Blois, was King of England from 22 December 1135 to his death in 1154. He was Count of Boulogne jure uxoris from 1125 until 1147 and Duke of Normandy from 1135 until 1144. His reign was marked by the Anarchy, a civil war with his cousin and rival, the Empress Matilda, whose son, Henry II, succeeded Stephen as the first of the Angevin kings of England.
The standard circulating coinage of the United Kingdom, British Crown Dependencies and British Overseas Territories is denominated in pennies and pounds sterling, and ranges in value from one penny sterling to two pounds. Since decimalisation, on 15 February 1971, the pound has been divided into 100 (new) pence. Before decimalisation, twelve pence made a shilling, and twenty shillings made a pound.
Empress Matilda, also known as Empress Maud, was one of the claimants to the English throne during the civil war known as the Anarchy. The daughter and heir of Henry I, king of England and ruler of Normandy, she went to Germany as a child when she was married to the future Holy Roman Emperor Henry V. She travelled with the emperor to Italy in 1116, was controversially crowned empress in St Peter's Basilica, and acted as the imperial regent in Italy. Matilda and Henry V had no children, and when he died in 1125, the imperial crown was claimed by his rival Lothair of Supplinburg.
The Anarchy was a civil war in England and Normandy between 1138 and 1153, which resulted in a widespread breakdown in law and order. The conflict was a war of succession precipitated by the accidental death of William Adelin who drowned in the White Ship disaster of 1120. Henry sought to be succeeded by his daughter, known as Empress Matilda, but was only partially successful in convincing the nobility to support her. On Henry's death in 1135, his nephew Stephen of Blois seized the throne, with the help of Stephen's brother Henry of Blois, who was the bishop of Winchester. Stephen's early reign saw fierce fighting with disloyal English barons, rebellious Welsh leaders, and Scottish invaders. Following a major rebellion in the south-west of England, Matilda invaded in 1139 with the help of her half-brother Robert of Gloucester.
Robert FitzRoy, 1st Earl of Gloucester was an illegitimate son of King Henry I of England. He was the half-brother of the Empress Matilda, and her chief military supporter during the civil war known as the Anarchy, in which she vied with Stephen of Blois for the throne of England.
The gold penny was a medieval English coin with a value of twenty pence.
The English penny, originally a coin of 1.3 to 1.5 grams pure silver, was introduced c. 785 by King Offa of Mercia. These coins were similar in size and weight to the continental deniers of the period and to the Anglo-Saxon sceats which had preceded it.
The history of the English penny from 1154 to 1485 covers the period of the House of Plantagenet, up to the Battle of Bosworth Field which brought about the beginning of the Tudor period. The Plantagenet era saw an overall rise in quality of the coinage but saw a decline in the number of mints used to produce coins.
The history of the English penny from 1485 to 1603 covers the period of the House of Tudor up to the death of Elizabeth I without an heir. The Tudor era saw the debasement of the penny under Henry VIII and Edward VI, with Elizabeth I's reign overseeing the recovery of the silver quality. Under the Tudors, the penny decreased in size.
The history of the English penny from 1603 to 1707 covers the period of the House of Stuart, up to the Acts of Union of 1707 which brought about the Union of the Kingdom of England with the Kingdom of Scotland.
The unite was the second English gold coin first produced during the reign of King James I. It was named after the legends on the coin indicating the king's intention of uniting his two kingdoms of England and Scotland. The unite was valued at twenty shillings until 1612 when the increase in the value of gold throughout Europe caused it to be raised to twenty-two shillings. The coin was produced during James I's second coinage (1604–1619), and it was replaced in the third coinage by the Laurel worth twenty shillings. All the coins were produced at the Tower Mint in London.
William FitzRobert, 2nd Earl of Gloucester was the son and heir of Sir Robert de Caen, 1st Earl of Gloucester, and Mabel FitzRobert of Gloucester, daughter of Robert Fitzhamon, and nephew of Empress Matilda.
The British halfpenny coin was worth 1/480th of a pound sterling. At first in its 700-year history it was made from silver, but as the value of silver increased the coin was made from base metals. It was finally abandoned in 1969 as part of the process of decimalising the British currency. "Halfpenny", colloquially written ha'penny, was pronounced HAY-pə-nee; "1 ½d" was spoken as a penny ha'penny or three ha'pence.
The history of the English penny can be traced back to the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of the 7th century: to the small, thick silver coins known to contemporaries as pæningas or denarii, though now often referred to as sceattas by numismatists. Broader, thinner pennies inscribed with the name of the king were introduced to Southern England in the middle of the 8th century. Coins of this format remained the foundation of the English currency until the 14th century.
Robert de Chesney was a medieval English Bishop of Lincoln. He was the brother of an important royal official, William de Chesney, and the uncle of Gilbert Foliot, successively Bishop of Hereford and Bishop of London. Educated at Oxford or Paris, Chesney was Archdeacon of Leicester before his election as bishop in December 1148.
Events from the 10th century in the Kingdom of England.
The Battle of Wilton was a battle of the civil war in England known as The Anarchy. It was fought on 1 July 1143 at Wilton in Wiltshire. An army under King Stephen was stationed at Wilton Abbey, where it was attacked by an army led by Robert Earl of Gloucester. Although King Stephen's army was defeated, the king himself escaped capture.
The siege of Oxford took place during the Anarchy—a period of civil war following the death of Henry I of England without a male heir—in 1142. Fought between his nephew, Stephen of Blois, and his daughter, the Empress Matilda, who had recently been expelled from her base in Westminster and chosen the City of Oxford as her new headquarters. Oxford by now was effectively a regional capital and important in its own right. It was a well-defended city with both rivers and walls protecting it, and was also strategically important as it was at a crossroads between the north, south-east and west of England, and also not far from London.
The English farthing was a coin of the Kingdom of England worth 1⁄4 of a penny, 1⁄960 of a pound sterling. Until the 13th century, farthings were pieces of pennies that had been cut into quarters to make change. The first English farthing coins were minted in the 13th century, and continued to be struck until the early 18th century, when England merged into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707.
Sussex in the High Middle Ages includes the history of Sussex from the Norman Conquest in 1066 until the death of King John, considered by some to be the last of the Angevin kings of England, in 1216. It was during the Norman period that Sussex achieved its greatest importance in comparison with other English counties. Throughout the High Middle Ages, Sussex was on the main route between England and Normandy, and the lands of the Anglo-Norman nobility in what is now western France. The growth in Sussex's population, the importance of its ports and the increased colonisation of the Weald were all part of changes as significant to Sussex as those brought by the neolithic period, by the Romans and the Saxons. Sussex also experienced the most radical and thorough reorganisation of land in England, as the Normans divided the county into five tracts of lands called rapes. Although Sussex may have been divided into rapes earlier in its history, under the Normans they were clearly administrative and fiscal units. Before the Norman Conquest Sussex had the greatest concentration of lands belonging to the family of Earl Godwin. To protect against rebellion or invasion, the scattered Saxon estates in Sussex were consolidated into the rapes as part of William the Conqueror's 'Channel march'.
Coincraft's Standard Catalogue English & UK Coins 1066 to Date, Richard Lobel, Coincraft. ISBN 0-9526228-8-2.
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