Medieval is not my strongpoint. I acquired a couple that I need help with, two what are pennies or perhaps one is a denier. The one is probably an English penny of King John under his father's name (?) and appears to be oddly struck, perhaps a mule, and may be Seaby 1350B. it weighs 1.3 grams. I would appreciate someone deciphering the inscription which may be the same on both sides. The other coin pictured is some kind silver which, from the fleur de lis, I am guessing is French. it weighs .9 grams and its silver seems somewhat more debased than the English penny. Otherwise I am completely lost on this coin. Again if someone can decipher the inscription I would appreciate it. Thanks for any assistance.
The coin on the right looks like a flip-over double strike of an English short cross penny; these were struck 1180-1247 so while this includes the reigns of Henry II, Richard I, John and Henry III, the obverse legend didn't change from HENRICVS REX. On the bottom image I can make out []ER.ON.LVN which could make it from London - Walter is a known moneyer from London. This series is not my strong point though so it could also be a continental imitation
Fascinating double-strike on the Angevin penny, @kevin McGonigal. You have to wonder how hungover the minter was. It would probably take more of the obverse to squint out the class (often --wish you could stop me-- datable within a small handful of years in any given reign), never mind confirming which one. But @Kiaora nailed the reverse. From nothing more fraught than Spink (2015), the possibilities for moneyers in London whose names end in "-ER," for the whole 'short cross' issue, spanning late Henry II -early Henry III, would appear to be: Henry II (who started the issue; 1180-1189: ) Aimer. Richard: Aimer again. John: Ilger, Rener, Walter. Henry III (1216 to his 'voided long cross' reform of 1247): Ilger again. Even with the chronological /regnal ambiguity, it's a Very cool example of what could happen at the mint, on somebody's bad day. The one on the left is a civic issue of Strasbourg, c. 14th-16th c. The legends go: "+GL[ORI]A IN EXCELS[IS] D[E]O;" "MONETA ARGENT." The only reference I can cite from print is Roberts, The Silver Coins of Medieval France, 9070. That's a variant, with "ARGENS" instead of "ARGENT." But if you go back far enough, I had one with the same legend as your example.
Thanks for calling in the cavalry. Thank you so very much. Can you decipher any more of the lettering on the Angevin penny? Is the whole legend just the city of London and the moneyer or is there anything else to it?
Aw, Shucks, @kevin McGonigal, Thanks for that. Regarding the reverse legend, nope, no worries; all it would ever have is "[Somebody, ending in] --ER ON LVNDE." The early Middle English is reducible to: "[the guy, moneyer] in [yep, for 'on'] London." --Also rendered "Lunden," although, in the coins, the shorter version is much more common. ...A cool thing about English coins of this broad period, from late Anglo-Saxon to Norman to early Angevin, is that the legends are bilingual. The obverse, with the king, is Medieval Latin; the reverse, with the mint and moneyer, is Old or early Middle English. It was one point in the Normans' favour (sic, for this minute) that they retained that much of the Anglo-Saxon minting infrastructure --which, in its own European context, was state-of-the-art-- along with the formula for the legends. (They did the same with a lot of the administrative infrastructure, but that's probably another post.)
