Featured Medieval Cut Pennies

I'm a hammered collector... perhaps that didn't come out right... in any case, I have some hammereds and they continue to fascinate me in pretty much any condition. I have no cut pennies, at least not yet, but that form seems to remain a much more affordable way to obtain some Anglo-Saxon coins. I've seen some very nice cut Edward the Confessor coins, but didn't take the plunge. They were about 1/4 of the price, or less, than the typical uncut penny. Is it me or do cut pennies usually have fewer or no clippings on them? Perhaps it's just me - I'm a hammered collector, after all.

 

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I think that is an interesting point. Speaking only of the hammered coins that I specialize in (Henry II to Edward I), I would say at first, yes it seems that a lot of the cut voided long cross pennies would seem to be very pure and unclipped. I would postulate (without any concrete data to back this up) that these coins may indeed have signs of clipping. However, without the visual context of the full coin to serve as a sort of guide or check, maybe the clipping is less readily apparent.

The other point I would make is that we often find heavily clipped examples of Edward I pennies, but your run of the mill Henry III exhibits far less clipping on average. Just a thought and I want to look back at the average weights found in hoards for these two groups to see if there is a statistical difference in weights to support this supposition.

 

I'm very curious to see what you find out. I agree that clipping depends on many factors and that even some types seem to display less clipping than others. I find the whole story of clipping somewhat entertaining as people kept finding loopholes in the royal monetary system. Some things never change.

 

I dug up a great excerpt from a paper written in the British Numismatic Society publication that made a very good point when it came to the clipping of half pennies for Henry III voided long cross pennies.

I think it makes a better argument than I thought of. It said that even though the pennies were only supposed to be cut at the mint, this law was widely disobeyed and many were cut during the course of normal business transactions.

They noted that rather clip the coin around the edges, as the "normal" practice of a clipper, the clipper would intentionally cut the penny slightly off center. This would leave one half of the two with slightly more silver and thus the clippers could shave the silver from the larger half. This would make it nearly impossible to detect the clipping as the other corresponding half was not around to compare.

This makes perfect sense. As for the whole pennies, clipping was still rampant, but why we don't see as many heavily clipped Henry III pennies, I am guessing, is because those worn coins were melted down by Edward I.

Edward instituted very harsh laws with regard to clipping upon his ascension to the Throne. Anyone caught clipping, or even accepting clipped coins could be hung, or at least a very heavy fine.

This would possibly explain why there are far fewer examples of heavily clipped Henry III

 

Great thread. Thanks to all who contributed. I have always had an interest in these but it seems as though some extensive reading might be in order first.

 

That's part of the enjoyment for me...learn so much from the reading.

 

That's fascinating information on the Henry III cut pennies, thanks for posting. Apparently the loophole is to just take a slightly higher portion of the pie and shave off the excess afterwards - brilliant! The voluminous types of crosses probably only helped to some extent - one could probably always take something off of the remaining portion of the cross. I have also read (though I forget where) that cutting, though risky for the general public, could take place nearly anywhere and any time.

Given how Henry I punished mint masters who debased the coinage by removing certain parts... ahem... of their anatomy in 1124, I'm not sure I'd want to risk losing something so precious for small silver shavings. Thankfully, I doubt I'll have to worry about that. It would be interesting to see if any criminal records for clippers exist in the rolls somewhere.

 

Coin clipping would at least get you the pillory, according to Curious Punishments of Bygone Days by Alice Morse Earle. Here's an excerpt:

"It would be impossible to enumerate the offences for which Englishmen were pilloried: among them were treason, sedition, arson, blasphemy,witch-craft, perjury, wife-beating, cheating, forestalling, forging, coin-clipping, tree-polling, gaming, dice-cogging, quarrelling, lying, libelling, slandering, threatening, conjuring, fortune-telling,'prigging,' drunkenness, impudence."​

Concerning forgery, the book has this to say: "Coiners could for the second offense be branded on the cheek F. for forgery."

A quick web search turned up some other information, such as this text about Edward I (to follow up from HammeredCoin's comments above) from Jewish News (The King who made a mint from the Jews):

'...Edward I launched a crackdown on the illegal practice of coin clipping, which involved shaving the rim of existing coins, melting the metal and then forging new coins.

While many were arrested and consequently tried for coin clipping, the worst punishments of all were reserved for the Jews. In 1279, he ordered the arrest of all the heads of Jewish households in England and had around 300 of them executed.

Gooch adds: “Undoubtedly coin clipping was rife in this time, because we have many examples of coins that were indeed chipped away at.

“But it was not an exclusively Jewish crime and the punishments given were extremely disproportionate. While Christians would be imprisoned, Jews often faced the harshest punishment of death.”'​

The article (from 2013) also talks about a exhibit at the tower of London called "Coins and Kings" that discussed highlights of the Tower Mint's history. I need a plane to London in 2013, please!

 

The persecution of the Jewish people by Edward has been written about quite a bit, and no doubt they suffered more than anyone else under Edwards rule. However, more recent research suggests that only 30-40 people were executed for forgery and/or clipping, far less than the contemporary accounts of close to 200.

In fact, Edward used this threat to extract huge sums of silver from fines from the most sophisticated clippers of the time and even influential businessmen were basically blackmailed to pay fines to further enrich (or rather pay Edwards overdue bills from his war with the Welsh) the crown. It is estimated that Edward collected nearly £12,000 in fines levied upon the "clippers" and paid for nearly half of the initial cost of his re coinage of 1279.

In light of all of this, the one thing Edward did accomplish was the price stability of the sterling he achieved...more on this if anyone cares

 

I definitely care!

 

Great! Once I get back from a short trip I will go into a little more detail as to the price stability under Edward relative to continental Europe that saw significant inflation/currency debasement at the time.

 

As a side note, the Red Book talks about the cutting of Spanish American Dollars on page 12: "Because of the shortage of small change, large coins were sometimes cut into smaller pieces for convenience. Spanish-American milled dollars were often chopped into halves, quarters, or eighths. Fradulent cutting into five or six 'quarters' caused many to distrust these cut pieces." And it shows a photo of a half-cut dollar. Most of us know this went on with all of the "pieces of eight" references, but I happened to be reading it the other night and thought of this thread.

 

A great addition to the discussion E. On the note of distrust, this too became a chronic problem at the end of Henry III reign. Many official documents and contracts started demanding the payment for goods and services in only whole pennies. One noted author noted in a paper written in the BNJ that the extremely low number of cut pennies found in every hoard dated towards the end of the 13th century shows that individuals put much more faith and value into whole coins rather than the cut coins, thus "hoards" contained so few.

 

The formation of the "R" with the line through it only occurs in class 1d. Minted in 1279.

 

awesome, thanks HC! i'll add that to my attribution.

 

No problem! Nice coin. Very deep and strong strike.

 

This is a cut halfpenny of Henry of Scotland, Earl of Northumberland





O: N[ENCI COM]I (Henry Count)
R: [WILLEM] ON:C[AR]D (William on Carlisle)
Stewart Type 2, cross fleury

This is an extremely rare coin, only a few dozen known (including damaged coins), of which there are 3 distinct types. A cut halfpenny is the only example I could realistically afford to add to my collection.

Henry of Northumberland was the son of King David I of Scotland, and the grandson of King Malcolm III Canmore of Scotland (the Malcolm of Shakespeare's Macbeth). He was given the title "Earl of Northumberland". He and his father were opportunists of the "Anarchy", when Stephen of Blois and Matilda of Anjou, the rival claimants to the English throne, went to war. The Scots fought against Stephen, and though defeated at the Battle of the Standard, they won the strategic goal of territory in the north of England. Henry, son of the Scottish king, was made Earl of Northumberland, and both he and his father issued coins, the first coins issued by Scottish monarchs. David's coins are rare, Henry's even more so. Henry was not a well person, and predeceased his father, so he was never King of Scotland; the throne passed to his son Malcolm IV.

 

I do love that time period Nap - cool coin

 

Hello, I am from Norfolk in England and have a interesting coin to share with you, a very are stephen half cut