EARLY ANGLO-SAXON GOLD SHILLINGS

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V24 2021 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 24, Number 21, May 23, 2021, Article 21

I recently discovered the blog of Julian Ticehurst at coins.earth. A post from March covered a topic I was unfamiliar with - early gold Anglo-Saxon shillings. It has some great photos courtesy of SPINK. Here's an excerpt. -Editor

The Gold Coinage c. 600–70
Britain was unusual among the former provinces of the Western Roman Empire in not maintaining a substantial coinage after the end of central imperial rule in the early fifth century. A small trickle of coins issued by the Franks, Visigoths and the Eastern Roman Empire still made their way to Britain across the fifth and sixth centuries. That trickle became a stronger flow late in the sixth century, and from some point in the early seventh century the Anglo-Saxons started to issue their own gold pieces, modelled in format on those of the Merovingian Franks. These coins, usually referred to as shillings (from the Old English scilling, scillingas), circulated in eastern and southern England for about fifty or sixty years, and gradually declined in fineness over time. The last specimens contain hardly any gold and are effectively silver.

Anglo-Saxon England, Crondall Types (c. 630-650), Gold Shilling, ‘Substantive Gold' Phase, London derived, crude bust right, with large features and hair swept back, striated halo forms border, rev. +ZUOONUUPLUV^. blundered legends, cross in beaded circle, 1.26g, 270° (SCBI 69, 1 this coin; T&S 22-31, pp. 41 and 59-60; A&W xi; Gannon 30, Figs. 2.9a and c, and 5.5g; North 22; Spink 754), a most attractive and provocative example of Anglo-Saxon portraiture, a small scuff on cheek and trace double-striking to reverse, otherwise good very fine, extremely rare, a truly superb centrepiece and the finest to appear in public commerce

provenance
M Vosper, March 2012
~ Found by Mike O'Bee ‘north of Horncastle' (Essex), 28 November 2011 ~

[EMC 2011.0275]
Sutherland has discussed the derivation of this type from the forward-facing portrait type with a clear reverse inscription of LONDVNIV. The influence of this type on the subsequent ‘London-derived' group ‘is to be seen most clearly in their conspicuously linear technique, in the adoption of a cross-hatching border for the obverse in the use of a plain cross as the central reverse type, and in the employment of a reverse legend which, enclosing the cross, strongly suggests by its blundered lettering that some form of the name ‘Londinium' or ‘Lundonia' served as a basis for imitation.' (ASGC, no. 43)

Academic debate as to further attribution and dating has raged for more than a century. In 1915, Baldwin Brown opined: ‘if struck in London with [its] ecclesiastical significance, the piece might conceivably be the work of Mellitus during his tenure of the See [604-c.617], and the head [depicts] that of an Archbishop'. More recently Anna Gannon has regarded this attribution as anachronistic as she reopened the discussion at the Cambridge Symposium (March 2015). It was suggested that this Shilling, if of Bishop Mellitus (d. 624), could be twinned with those shillings of York, possibly by Edwin (d. 633) or Paulinus. In the context of the celebrated issue of Eadbald of Kent (616-640) imply a date earlier than c. 630 for the reintroduction of this native coinage to England, and possibly as far back as the Kentish kingdoms conversion to Christianity in AD 619.