History of the English penny (c. 600 – 1066)

The history of the English penny can be traced back to the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of the 7th century: to the small, thick silver coins known to contemporaries as pæningas or denarii, though now often referred to as sceattas by numismatists.

The only known examples of larger silver denominations are two 'offering pieces' produced in the reign of Alfred the Great weighing the equivalent of six regular pennies, which were made as alms-pieces, probably to be sent abroad.

However, analysis of surviving single-finds (principally made since the 1970s by users of metal-detectors) shows that coins were used extensively, especially in the eastern half of England, both within and outside towns; they also circulated widely, and are frequently found far from their mint of origin.

Hoards of coins and bullion – especially silver – from this period are very numerous in Britain, presumably due to disturbances of invasion, civil war and economic uncertainty.

These terms reflect translations of continental legal usage, and may well describe measures of value and/or weight rather than coins as such, yet nonetheless it is probable that the gold tremisses produced in 7th-century England were referred to as scillingas.

Unfortunately, because very few coins bear any form of legend and there was extensive imitation and copying, it is extremely difficult to assign dates and minting-places to many of the types and series identified by modern scholars.

These are arranged into lettered series according to the scheme of Stuart Rigold, devised in the 1960s and 70s, and sometimes by the numbers applied to types in the British Museum catalogues of the 1880s and expanded thereafter to around 150 different varieties.

Minting places in the Low Countries such as Dorestad and Domburg supplied a significant proportion of the currency circulating in England at any one time, and were among the most important commercial centres in Europe.

Initially struck in fine silver, Beonna's coinage later declined in standard, though one of his moneyers survived to strike some of the earliest coins known for Offa of Mercia.

It was Offa who introduced the broad penny to southumbrian England on a substantial scale, and made the employment of king's and moneyer's names standard at least three mints: Canterbury, London and somewhere in East Anglia.

His earliest coins bear an abbreviated version of the royal title influenced by that on the coinage of Pippin III, and on the reverse the moneyer's name.

Early in the course of his coinage (probably in the 760s or 770s) there were also smaller issues at Canterbury in the names of two local Kentish kings, Heaberht (of whom only one coin survives) and Ecgberht II.

Portraits were introduced at an early stage, and were executed in a number of different styles betraying a range of artistic influences drawing on contemporary and Roman sources.

Coenwulf continued a portrait coinage for the rest of his reign at Canterbury, London, East Anglia and, from c. 810, at a new mint located at Rochester in Kent.

In the years between Coenwulf's death in 821 and Egbert of Wessex's conquest of Kent and the south-east in 825, the mint at Canterbury weathered a turbulent period that is better reflected in the coins than any written source.

Coenwulf's brother and successor Ceolwulf I held Kent, but coins in his name from Canterbury are very rare and struck by only a few of the full complement of moneyers.

This is one of very few cases in Anglo-Saxon England where it looks like coinage was being used in a propagandistic way: design and production was not as closely tied to politics and current events as in the classical or modern period.

Egbert's coinage from Kent at first continued the pattern of Baldred's, but was reformed c. 828 to introduce a new reverse monogram type, retaining a portrait of the king on the obverse.

These kings mainly issued non-portrait pennies bearing a large central A, and other designs which were often particular to individual moneyers, though produced by a common die-cutter.

The third type of Æthelwulf's reign was a non-portrait coinage with the ambiguous mint legend DORIBI (which could refer to either Canterbury, Dorobernia; or Rochester, Dorobrebia) and a monogram for CANT(ia).

This new coinage survived into the reign of Æthelwulf's son Æthelberht (no genuine coins are known of Æthelbald, who ruled 858–60) under whom it became very substantial: about forty moneyers are known to have produced it.

The inscribed cross coinage is notable for the onset of major debasement, the centralisation of die-cutting for Canterbury and Rochester, and for a massive increase in the number of moneyers, so that almost 50 are known from the time of Æthelberht.

At London, which lay within the Mercian kingdom, Alfred was initially recognised as king of Mercia as well as Wessex after the deposition of Burgred in 873/4, and was even called REX ANG(lorum) on one of two known examples of the two emperors portrait penny type.

These include a portrait coin – probably from around the same time as the London monogram pennies – with the mint-name ÆT GLEAPA ('from Gloucester'), which had become an important centre of 'English' Mercia under Alfred's ealdorman Æthelred; a small number of 'four-line' non-portrait pennies with reverse mint names assigning their production to Winchester and Exeter; another non-portrait series probably struck at Oxford (OHSNAFORDA); and large silver 'offering pieces' inscribed ELIMOSINA ('alms').

However, debasement became a serious issue around the end of the 8th century, when numismatists begin to apply the term stycas to Northumbrian coinage (based on a 10th-century gloss in the Lindisfarne Gospels; contemporary terminology is unknown).

[citation needed] Two exceptional coins illustrate that Northumbrian coinage in the 9th century may not have been entirely composed of stycas: a gold Mancus survives in the name of Archbishop Wigmund, modelled on contemporary gold solidi of Louis the Pious; and a silver penny found in the Cornish Trewhiddle hoard of c. 868 in the name of EANRED REX, with an anomalous reverse legend apparently reading ĐES MONETA ('his coin'(?))

[citation needed] The styca coinage was studied extensively by Elizabeth Pirie who produced an "indispensable corpus of known finds" in her work Coins of the Kingdom of Northumbria.

However, despite the regionalised types and circulation of coinage, pennies remained of relatively stable size, weight and fineness, and most importantly were always struck in the name of the West Saxon king.

Mint names became more common, and there were a number of appropriations from earlier English coinage, such as a resurrection of Alfred's London monogram on halfpennies and Æthelstan's royal title REX TO(tius) BRIT(anniae).

However, since large numbers of roughly contemporary Arabic and, later, German coins have also been found in Scandinavia, it is probable that the bulk of the English imports came via trade rather than military action.