Table of Contents

COINS OF THE ANCIENT BRITONS.[3]
COINS OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS.[19]
ENGLISH COINS.[33]
TRADERS’ TOKENS.[69]
GREEK AND ROMAN COINS.[99]
I. GREEK COINS.[100]
II. ROMAN COINS.[121]
[Transcriber’s notes:]

COINS OF THE ANCIENT BRITONS.

It is not possible to say, with any degree of certainty, at what precise period our ancient British forefathers acquired a knowledge of the art of coining, or into what part of our island that art was first introduced. The probability, however, amounting almost to a certainty, is that the use of money and, consequently, the art of making it, was introduced into Britain from Gaul; and the Kentish coast being the nearest to that country, and receiving friendly and bartering incursions from the Belgic tribes, with whom, doubtless, the natives traded, the natural assumption is that money was known to, and its use appreciated by, the inhabitants of that county long before those of the inland and more northern parts of the island had any knowledge of such a medium as a substitute for ordinary product-barter. Kent may therefore, I apprehend, be looked upon as the district in which money made its first appearance in our country; and, probably, where also it was first made by our Celtic progenitors.

“Gothic Crown,” of Queen Victoria.

The period which may, with more than ordinary probability; be assigned to the adoption of a home-struck currency among the tribes of our country, is also, naturally, a matter about which only a vague conclusion can be arrived at. The conclusion, however, that has been come to after the most assiduous and searching attention to and consideration of every possible circumstance of locality, analogy of types, and weight, is that that period may be fixed at from a hundred and fifty to two hundred years before the birth of Christ. This, then, for general purposes may be looked upon as the most closely approximate period that the present state of our knowledge has enabled those numismatists who have made this branch of the science their special study to arrive at.

The type of supposed earliest coins of the Britons, derived, there can be no doubt, from those of Gaul, to which they had become accustomed, are uninscribed; those of Gaul having, in turn, originally and long before the days of Julius Cæsar, been derived from the stater of Philippus of Macedon. This has been ably shown and insisted upon by various writers, and to it Mr. Evans, the highest and most enlightened authority upon the subject, has given his full adhesion. The Phocæan colony of Massilia (Marseilles), he says, “appears to have formed the centre from which civilization spread through Gaul, as well as to have been the emporium of its commerce. It was founded about B.C. 600, and from intercourse with its inhabitants the neighbouring Gauls first learned the usages of civilized life, and after a time became acquainted with the art of coining. The early silver coins of Massilia (and none in gold are known) were occasionally imitated in the surrounding country; but when, about the year B.C. 356, the gold mines of Crenides (or Philippi) were acquired by Philip II. of Macedon, and worked so as to produce about £250,000 worth of gold annually, the general currency of gold coins, which had before been of very limited extent, became much more extensive, and the stater of Philip—the regale numisma of Horace—became everywhere diffused, and seems at once to have been seized on by the barbarians who came in contact with Greek civilization as an object of imitation. In Gaul this was especially the case, and the whole of the gold coinage of that country may be said to consist of imitations, more or less rude and degenerate, of the Macedonian Philippus.”

The types of the Philippus are, on the obverse, a laureated profile bust of Apollo, or young Hercules, and, on the reverse, a charioteer in a biga, and the earliest Gaulish imitations are tolerably closely, though more rudely, rendered. These, naturally, were introduced, and became known, to the Britons, who, as naturally, imitated them, as their neighbours had done the originals. But these imitations were not always servile, but had occasionally additional features, as drapery, a torque round the neck, a bandlet, or what not. The constant reproducing of the dies by different workmen and in different localities also resulted in the original design being at length almost lost, and what now, to the uninitiated, appear a lot of unmeaning pellets and curved strokes, serve only as indications, or faint traces, of the original. Here, upon the coins (p. [5]), is an example. First is the stater of Philip of Macedon, with laureated bust and biga; next a British coin on which there is an attempted reproduction of the head on one side, and a rude imitation of horse and driver on the other; and on the third a very degenerate example, on which only a trace of each is discernible. These three, out of hundreds of examples, will serve to show the descent of the type and the changes to which the design has been subjected. Other types shared the same fate, and thus the correct appropriation of Celtic coins becomes a matter of no little difficulty. It is well to remember, as evidenced by these gradual marks of degeneration, that the ruder coins are not, as might well be (and indeed have usually been) supposed, the oldest, but are, in fact, later than others of a higher and more artistic character. In other words, some of these series of coins, instead of showing the onward and gradual progress of art from a first rude attempt up to a highly finished work, serve to exhibit step by step its gradual degeneracy and decline down to ultimate extinction.

Other coins were more or less imitations of Roman coins, but others again have a true native character about them that shows that the Briton, who was an admirable and accomplished worker in metals, was also a clever die-sinker, and had in him considerable power of design.

Celtic coins are usually considered under two classes, the uninscribed and the inscribed—that is, those which are without any inscriptions, and those upon which names or other letters occur—and it seems to be a generally received opinion that whenever an inscribed currency was in use, an uninscribed one had preceded it. The uninscribed are, unfortunately, the most abundant, and therefore, manifestly, it is impossible to judge by them to what princes or tribes they belong. The geographical arrangement—that of classifying the types according to the localities in which they have been found—has therefore, as a general and very convenient rule, to be adopted. Some coins, as the one here engraved from my own collection, have the convex side perfectly plain, while the reverse, concave, side bears a more or less rude representation of a horse.

Figs. A-J, TYPES OF
ANCIENT BRITISH COINS.

“Although we have assigned the date of about 150 B.C. for the commencement of the British coinage,” Mr. Evans remarks, “it is hard to say with any degree of certainty in what part of the country it actually commenced. The study of this class of coins is to some extent like that of geology: we have no written testimony on which to fall back, and the annals of the past have to be reconstructed from the evidence of contemporary yet dumb witnesses disinterred from the soil. But the numismatist has none of those aids which the geologist derives from the order of superposition, and the mineral characters of the rocks in which his fossils are preserved; and, in the case of uninscribed coins, has nothing but the type and its geographical range on which to found any conclusion, unless, as in some rare instances it happens, the coins are associated with others of more certain date. The mere fact of finding a single coin of a certain class in a certain locality proves nothing; but when a considerable number of coins of much the same type are found at different times in places all within a certain district, the proof becomes almost conclusive that they were originally struck within that district. And this holds true even with gold coins, which, from their greater value and relative portability, have, as a rule, a much wider range than those of silver or copper.”

The districts into which it has been found most convenient (and undoubtedly as presenting an arrangement that may be looked upon as practically correct) to classify the inscribed coins are as follows:—

I.—COINS OF THE WESTERN DISTRICT, or country of the Dobuni, comprising the present counties of Somerset, Wilts, Gloucester, and part of Oxfordshire and Berkshire, and in which are classed the coins of—

BODVOC of uncertain date.
CATTI " "
COMVX " "
VO-CORIO-AD (?) " "
ANTEDRIGVS after 41 A.D.
SVEI uncertain date.
INARA (?)

II.—SOUTH-EASTERN DISTRICT, or country of the Belgæ, Regni, and Atrebatii, comprising the present counties of Hampshire, Sussex, and West Surrey, and in which are classed the coins of—

COMMIVSthe earliest inscribed coin, 55 B.C.
COMMI F[IL]
TINC[OMMIVS]		 son of Commius.
VERICA or VIRICA son of Commius. The first coin with REX inscribed.

III.—KENTISH DISTRICT, or country of the Cantii, comprising the present counties of Kent and East Surrey, and in which are classed the coins of—

EPPILLVS son of Commivs.
DVBNOVELLAVNVS temp. Augusti.
VOSE[NOS] of uncertain date.
AMMINVS " "
CRAB " "

IV.—The CENTRAL DISTRICT, or country of the Catyeuchlani and Trinobantes, comprising the present counties of Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Middlesex, Essex, Northamptonshire, and parts of Berkshire, Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, and Oxfordshire, and in which are included the coins of—

ANDOCO[MIVS] contemporary with Tasciovanus.
TASCIOVANVS 30 B.C., who died 5 A.D.
VERULAMIUM which was the chief seat of Tasciovanus’s government.
RUFI or RVLI
DIAS
RICON
SEGO		}
}
}
}		contemporary, but unknown.
EPATICVSson of Tasciovanus.
CVNOBELINVSson of Tasciovanus, circa 40 A.D.
And several others whose legends are undecipherable.

V.—The EASTERN DISTRICT, or country of the Iceni, comprising the present counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, and parts of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire, and in which are classed the coins of—

ADDEDOMARVS, supposed to have been contemporary with Cunobelinus.
ECEN
SAEMV—
ACSV
ANTED
CAV (?) or CAM
DVRO		}
}
}
}
}
}		 all unknown

VI.—The YORKSHIRE DISTRICT, or country of the Brigantes, comprising Yorkshire and parts of the adjacent counties to the south, and in which are included the coins of—

VOLISIOS.
DVMNOCOVEROS.
DVMN—TIGIP—SENO (?)
VEP—
CORF.
AVN T—
IISVPSV.

The parts of the country inhabited at one time or other by various tribes may be tabulated as follows, and will be useful to students of that early period of national history; the present names of counties, as the most convenient, are given in the list. The tribes seem to have been the—

I now proceed to enumerate some of the inscribed coins referred to under the geographical arrangement already given.