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‘A special, but very solid, demonstration of the English state is the coinage.’ Thus wrote James Campbell, one of several historians in recent times who have quite rightly emphasized the remarkable unity and sophistication of the late Anglo-Saxon monetary system. It stands in stark contrast to the currency of late Carolingian and early Capetian France, or that of Ottonian and Salian Germany, where in both cases power over minting had passed into the hands of a plethora of secular and ecclesiastical magnates. Almost every mint had its own distinct coinage. In the whole kingdom of England, there was only one. As Campbell observed, this contrast in monetary history has been used as one benchmark of royal authority in a more general sense. The frequent reforms and nation-wide standardization instituted by Edgar towards the end of his reign brought into being the ‘gold standard’ of early medieval royal coinages, at the same time as other – though often less clearly traceable – developments in government and kingly representation were building momentum. In essence there is no disputing this special place which coinage occupies in the armoury of sources available to the early medieval historian. It survives in relative quantity and consistency from diverse parts of the kingdom, and gives an important insight into one sphere of society and government which usually operated separately from that responsible for chronicles, charters and most other raw materials of early medieval history. At the same time, numismatists should be under no illusions about the importance of coinage. In the grand scheme of things coinage was a relatively minor part of a kingdom’s administration, at least as long as it was broadly meeting expectations. Insignificance is in one sense, however, a virtue. Substantive changes in the coinage are unlikely to have been isolated phenomena and hint at more general enterprises which once touched on many other, now lost, media. If this is what could be accomplished with coins, the argument goes, how far could the same arrangements have extended into other areas?

The scale of minting in southern England in the eighth and ninth centuries prompts a number of questions, above all what became of these pennies after leaving the mint. It is at this point that numismatics gives way to monetary history. England’s plentiful find-data allow this to be pursued in great detail, on the basis of the material recorded for several decades in the pages of Coin Hoards and the Coin Register, and latterly in the electronic Corpus of Early Medieval Coin Finds and Portable Antiquities Scheme. Making the most of this information depends on the contributions different types of coin-find have to offer. Hoards of multiple coins, on the one hand, represent agglomerations of currency hidden or lost, and not recovered until modern times. They might be the savings of an individual or community put together painstakingly over many years, including a wide array of coins added at different times; alternatively, they might have been drawn en bloc from the circulating currency, with or without prejudice in favour of coins of specific design or weight. Dangerous times – war, civil and political unrest, plague and similar – could have a significant effect on the rate at which coins were deposited and not recovered. Both savings and currency hoards are a fundamental source for determining the chronology of a coinage, and also give some insight into which issues were acceptable in use at a specific place and time.

Coinage and recoinage Among the many provisions of the Edict of Pitres laid down in June 864 was one in which Charles the Bald stipulated ‘ut ab ipsa missa sancti Martini per omne regnum nostrum non nisi istius nostrae novae monetae meri et bene pensantes denarii accipiantur’. This has been connected by numismatists with a major reform of the currency which swept away the earlier coinages of diverse design and inconsistent metallic quality in favour of the Gratia Dei rex issue. Just as Charles commanded, west Frankish hoards from 864 onwards quickly came to be dominated by the new coinage. His measure, so it seemed, had been a success. What Charles implemented in 864 is the classic example of what numismatists have called a renovatio monetae : a reform of the coinage in which the old currency was demonetized in favour of a new one. The roots of the policy go back to ancient times, and it can be traced in various proclamations of late Roman and Byzantine emperors. In the context of a precious-metal coinage this meant melting down the old coins and having them restruck throughout the kingdom. Charles the Bald’s 864 recoinage was not the only one to work along these lines, but it is among the best-recorded. It combines a clear monetary impact with relatively detailed documentation, and its provisions have been tentatively assumed to apply to many other times and places in the early Middle Ages.

Early medieval coinage was fundamentally different from most modern currencies in that its value and acceptability were grounded in its precious-metal content. For this reason the amount of silver or gold in the coinage was usually controlled by the minting authorities and carefully scrutinized by coin-users. There were two factors which determined the quantity of precious metal in a coin: its weight and the purity of the precious metal from which it was struck. These were intimately associated with one another in the early Middle Ages, and together constituted a vital part of the general estimation of the coinage. For Isidore of Seville, weight and fineness – pondus et metallum – were just as important as design ( figura ) in giving a coin its acceptable status. Standardization and reliability were the underlying concerns and were an important end in themselves for early medieval rulers. Respect for these essential features of the currency was repeatedly demonstrated in early medieval legislation against defective coin. Charlemagne laid down large fines in 794 for anyone who rejected denarii that carried the king’s name and ‘are of sound silver and full weight’ ( mero sunt argento, pleniter pensantes ); an injunction that was repeated several times in later Carolingian capitularies. Late Anglo-Saxon law-codes made an explicit link between good coinage and the spiritual wellbeing of society as a whole. The ‘maintenance of the coinage’ ( feos bot ), in the words of the Wulfstanian law-codes V and VI AEthelred and II Cnut, was an integral feature of the ‘maintenance of peace’ ( friðes bot ), on a par with the performance of military service and the avoidance of sins such as murder, fraud, adultery and sacrilege. As far as one can tell from these documents, reliable coinage was seen as a vital ingredient of a healthy society, and a reliable coinage was one which looked and weighed the part and contained as much silver as it was supposed to. To understand early medieval coinage in its proper setting, therefore, it is necessary to examine these features of weight and fineness as they metamorphosed over time. Quality and consistency were the primary aims, and by and large both were achieved fairly successfully; hence the generally extensive use of coinage in southern England in this period, even outside its kingdom of origin. But standards could change or slip, reflecting fluctuations in the supply of silver or exploitation of the currency. Who changed standards and why is not always easy to determine, and neither is it always possible to know the economic causes and consequences of such fluctuations, at least on a short-term basis. Yet the matter of how much silver contemporary coinage contained was evidently important to early medieval observers and represented an integral part of its relationship with contemporary society and power.