I do not collect English coins. I do not collect medieval coins to any extent. In the last two weeks I have added four English coins to my collection but I have an excuse. I always wanted a farthing or cut quarter of a whole penny. I don't know why but I just thought the concept was twice as good as a cut half. The opportunity arose when a "dealer I have used before" (as eBay puts it) offered a number of early English silver fractions. I selected a cut quarter of a penny of John (you know, the Magna Carta king and arch villain in the Robin Hood stories) 1199-1216 AD (old enough that I don't feel I have to apologize to all my ancient coins). I selected this one since it had enough clear reverse legend (+WA) to identify the moneyer as Walter on London. Not all moneyers can be defined by two letters and not all two letter pairs on this coin would be definitive. I would prefer if the obverse did better than REX but we can be too picky on this quarter circle sort of thing. These coins give a lot more portrait to lower quarters so at least I got a half face. The coin weighs 0.30g. Now we all know that buying one old coin is like eating potato chips so it dawned upon me that I did not have a full circle struck farthing and the same dealer happened to have a round farthing of Edward I (arch villain of Braveheart - asking for a John might be pushing my luck)1272-1307 AD. It weighs 0.33g. I don't have a whole John penny but here is a relatively massive Edward I (1.32g) I have had for years. I see I was inconstant on which way was 'up' on reverses. I am impressed that 4x0.33=1.32. These guys were good or I got lucky. Does anyone else like cut pennies?
I don't know how I feel about you dabbling in non-ancient coins @dougsmit . This totally upends my mental image of you. Now that I have that out of the way, those are all pretty interesting examples so I guess I will let it slide this time. Thanks for sharing
Your quarter penny of John still manages to have an expression on his face, nice! I like the Byzantine Follis cut into quarters and reissued as Follis. Like tearing a dollar bill into quarters and spending each part as one dollar. I have several examples but no pictures yet. John
I am unaware of that one. My Justinian II is a 20 overstruck on 1/4 of a 40. That only doubled its value rather than quadrupling it.
A post on medieval coins by Doug, what a treat! Congrats on the great cut farthing, John has wonderful detail for being quartered. Your coins of Edward I are also great coins. I always enjoy seeing what coins people have in their collection that are outside of their collecting area. I absolutely love English and Scottish cut farthings and half pennies! They are a lot of fun to collect to identify and classify. They are also one of the few ways rare coins can still be found for cheap. It is interesting to note that cut half pennies and farthings are very rare in English hoards, yet regularly show up in French and Northern European coin hoards. In England they were the daily medium of exchange and circulated widely. They could also be redeemed for uncut pennies at a mint. In continental Europe their silver content was often greater than the debased local coinage, and therefore worth hoarding. I'll add a nice cut halfpenny of Henry I Star in Lozenge Fleury coinage (BMC xiii). London mint; Ælfric, moneyer. Struck circa 1121. 19mm, 0.69g Obv: [+hENRICV]S R. Crowned bust left, holding scepter. Rev: + ALFR[ : ON : LV]NDE :, lozenge with incurved sides; star at center, fleur at each end, and trefoil in each quarter. North 869; SCBC 1274
Great coin! I should find one of those one day soon. I am a big fan of cut coins. Most of mine are in my collecting area, Roman Republic, and in pretty bad shape. I like to let YNs hold them when I talk about coin collecting. I get plenty of giggles when I say this is my half As collection.
A bit of both I suspect. I think this is the best paper to look at (only part open access): https://www.jstor.org/stable/42667286?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents Pennies varied from a low of 1.35g to a high of 1.45g on average between 1158 and 1279. The theoretical weight should be 1.46g (30 troy wheat grains, 22.5 troy barley grains) The high point - 1.45g - comes from looking at 1000 early Ed I pennies of London mint from the Colchester hoard – (for all mints the average of even that hoard was 1.43g). The variation over time seems to be because the mint was rather covertly applying additional charges. Theoretically it seem the policy was to strike 256 pennies to a troy pound, hang onto 16 of them as a kind of tax, and pay out 240 as a money pound. Thus 240 ought to weigh c. 350g (a tower or sterling pound). However, after 1279 the mint was actually striking 243 coins from c. 350g. Before then, sometimes it probably struck 242 to the tower pound, or perhaps even 246 to the tower pound. But it since it was a kind of stealth tax, we are left in the dark, guessing, most times. I suspect only big merchants had scales good enough to check the facts anyhow – so any challenge to mint practice would come from that quarter, in private. Hard to say what is going on with your single coin though. Maybe it is low just for some random batch reason, or due to a little bit of clipping, or just wear? Rob T
Here is a new picture of a "Follis overstruck on a quarter Follis" folly that I had at home. I am pretty sure I have more because I remember reassembling them into an approximate whole coin. This is a very small coin weighing 2.24 grams. I got this in a group lot from Forum. John
Thanks for lending medievals some of your respectability, Doug! I love both of your farthings. I have a cut halfpenny, but now feel a deep need for a cut farthing too... with an identifiable moneyer. Excellent. My halfpenny: Sadly the portrait is only neck & beard, but I have more than half of the name: [HA]ROLD RE[X], and most of the moneyer's name ERNCET[EL] (York). This is Harold II of 1066 fame. A full penny would have set me back over a grand, so I'm happy to have this! Thanks for this fascinating detail @TheRed!
This John benefits from the moneyer name Rener and was cut on the cross as usual but the axis made the obverse a diagonal half conveniently keeping the hENRICV which starts left of top center.
Interesting coins. I read this MEDIEVAL COINS – An Introduction online and found it worth the read. This is found therein:
Great group of recycled coins; money of necessity. Small change has always been essential to the common folks. Regarding the Byz coins one could make a lifetime study of the coins of Constans II. The transformation of the coinage based on the impact of the rise of Islam is a study in and of itself from the Imperial issues, and the rise of "immatative" Islamic issues that replaced them.
nice one, i have a quarter of a Henry III penny that i got free in a ebay lot when i was starting out collecting
(see above for live link) Many thanks for this - had not seen it before. At 22.2 grains the figure for the 1279 penny follows the known texts and assumes 243 pennies struck to the pound (rounded off to one decimal place). If we turn to the actual coins, Allen cites Archibald noting that the London mint was managing to keep the discrepancy lower (241.6 per pound). But only at that mint. Why would that be? A guess would be that it depends on who the mint got its silver from. Perhaps London was getting ingots newly imported, and was giving a good deal to encourage foreign merchants? Meanwhile, provincial mints might be taking old worn coin collected in tax, and a bit more wriggle room was needed? Maybe London was just more efficient? Just guessing – anyone got different ideas? Kelleher and Cook play it amusingly safe in giving such a random list of prices! Surely the main question to ask, is - what the did the average guy get paid per day? Its interesting to track this matter over time. (Caution: I take the below mostly from memory) Back around 1820 the idea emerged that the medieval peasant was much better off than his Tudor or contemporary equivalent. Cobbett’s argument for this was mostly from the size of churches – by 1820 the typical village church was way too big for the local population. By 1887 that side of the argument was digging into documents with the work of Thorold Rogers. That suggested around 1300 a guy would get 4d per day, and would be doing really well with his shopping compared with later times. That sort of idea held the high ground till quite recently, but people have been digging further into the facts and now suggest 1) Rogers tended to use wages taken from prestige contracts, for kings and bishops etc – since they dominate the documents we have. But they probably were not representative, and also were likely payments to gang masters – so - like modern payments to employment agencies – were not what the guy himself actually got. 2) The statute of labour I think also caps wages at 4d in the late 14th century. Rogers rolled that out over the year. But it seems those negotiations were with the limited pool of free labour and concerning just the harvest period. And that was only about 40 days per year. So again, we are left guessing about the reality of year round household incomes……………… Rob T
