THE BRIGANTES.
A number of coins have, with plausible reasoning, been appropriated by Mr. Evans and other authorities, to the Brigantes, whose dominions seem to have comprised Yorkshire, Lancashire, and other northern parts, and who are indeed said to have been the original inhabitants, the Britons proper, of the island, who had been driven inland and northwards by successive invaders of the soil, and they seem to have been among the latest to retain the original national characteristics. Among the inscribed coins (which are of unusual rudeness) believed to have belonged to them, are those bearing the letters VO·LI·SI·OS on the obverse, and DVM NOCO VEROS, or DVMNO CO VEROS, on the reverse; DVMNOVERO; IISVPSV; VEP, VEP CORF, or VEP RF; DVMN on obverse, and TIGIP-SENO on reverse; AVNT or AVN-T, the AVN being over the back of the horse, and the T beneath its neck.
CHANNEL ISLANDS.
A number of types of rude uninscribed coins, partaking of the character of those of Gaulish origin, mostly in billon, but sometimes of silver or bronze, are ascribed to the Channel Islands, and numbers of them have been found in Jersey and other islands, as well as in our own country. The examples engraved are in my own possession, and were found, with others, in Devonshire.
The usual type is a boldly cut, but rudely designed, head, a coarse imitation of the Greek already referred to; and the reverse a horse more or less disjointed or disintegrated, and accompanied by indications, more or less distinct, of wheels and other objects.
As indicating to some extent the area over which the coins of the ancient Britons circulated, it may be said that the approximate number of recorded localities in which “finds” have been made in the “forty shires” may be summarized as most of all in Kent (say forty places); about half that number in Dorset, Sussex, and Essex; about a third in Oxfordshire; say a fourth in Suffolk, Surrey, Buckingham, Hampshire, Herts, and Northampton; and so decreasing in Beds., Cambs., and Norfolk; Berks, Middlesex, and Gloucester; Wilts and Somerset; Lincolnshire and Yorkshire; Leicestershire, Monmouthshire, and Worcestershire; and Devonshire, Cornwall, Huntingdon, Lancashire, Northumberland, Nottingham, and Westmoreland. Derbyshire, Staffordshire, and the other counties not enumerated, not having, so far as at present known to me, produced a single recorded example.
