The quart d'ecu, or as it was sometimes written cardecue, was a French piece of money first coined in the reign of Henry III. It was the fourth part of the gold crown, and worth fifteen sols. It is a fact not generally known, that many foreign coins were current at this time in England; some English coins were likewise circulated on the continent. The French crown and its parts passed by weight only.
Scene 4. Page 339.
Hel. All's well that ends well: still the fine's a crown.
In King Henry VI. part 2. Act V. we have "la fin couronne les œuvres." Both phrases are from the Latin finis coronat opus. In this sense we still use the expression to crown, for to finish or make perfect. Coronidem imponere is a metaphor well known to the ancients, and supposed to have originated from the practice of finishing buildings by placing a crown at their top as an ornament; and for this reason the words crown, top and head are become synonymous in most languages.
There is reason for believing that the ancients placed a crescent at the beginning, and a crown, or some ornament that resembled it, at the end of their books. In support of the first usage we have a poem by Ausonius entitled CORONIS which begins in this manner:
"Quos legis à prima deductos menide libri."
And of the other, these lines in Martial, lib. x. ep. 1:
"Si nimius videor, seraque coronide longus
Esse liber: legito pauca, libellus ero."
The mark which was used in later times for the coronis has been preserved in the etymologies of Isidore, lib. i. c. 20. It is this,
