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Does anyone know why the British coins got to be so bad after William the Conqueror?

BillJonesBillJones Posts: 33,427 ✭✭✭✭✭
edited March 17, 2018 3:05PM in World & Ancient Coins Forum

I have just completed a run of British coins for each monarch from Edward the Confessor to Queen Elizabeth II. One interesting fact that noted was the poor quality of some pieces. One stretch occurred after William the Conqueror. Here are some examples.

Many Edward the Confessor coins were well made for the period.

Harold II coins were nicely made too.

And from what I've seen William the Conqueror's coins were pretty good.

Then we get to William II a.k.a. "Rufus." This coin has no portrait. I saw another one for a lot more money that had a portrait but no lettering. Between the two I'd take this one which is easy to read.

Then we get the Henry I, Rufus' brother who probably had him killed in a "hunting accident." His coins were terrible. There was story that he had his minters come to London for a "Christmas celebration." When they got there, Henry had their right hands cut off and also removed their manhood to put it as delicately as I can. The moral? Don't fool with Henry's coins!!!

There was also a wave coin mutilation during Henry’s rule because people thought that the coinage was being debased. That probably related to the action Henry took against his minters. Henry ordered the coins to be clipped at the mint so that all of his coinage would look similar.

This coin is probably a ground salvage piece, and is ugly as sin, but it was cheap. Why buy some coin that that quite ugly for over a grand when you can get something that is really ugly for a couple hundred … if you follow my drift?

And there was Stephen. Compared to some other Stephen pieces I've seen, this one wins a beauty contest. I have never seen a coin for Matilda, who was the true heir the crown, but in those days the nobles were about to accept a woman as their sole leader. I'm sure that her coins were just as bad ... when you can find one. I expect I never will.

Then along came Henry II, and the coins got better ... And yes I know that this coin has "H II" stamped on it, but this collection has been more for fun and history than an essay on high grade examples.

So what happened from 1087 to 1154? Why were the coin so poorly made?

Retired dealer and avid collector of U.S. type coins, 19th century presidential campaign medalets and selected medals. In recent years I have been working on a set of British coins - at least one coin from each king or queen who issued pieces that are collectible. I am also collecting at least one coin for each Roman emperor from Julius Caesar to ... ?

Comments

  • EVillageProwlerEVillageProwler Posts: 5,859 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Going off vague recollection, I think the reason was a resentment by the mint workers who were English towards their Norman occupiers. The English mint workers were disincentivized to doing a good job for their non-English masters.

    If you recall, after the successful invasion by the Normans, William purged a lot of the English upper crust of society. And that replacement of “English” with “Norman” in all aspects of society was a big deal even to the common folk, like speaking French.

    Anyway, that’s what I think. It took a while for that resentment to fade and for the Norman masters to become the new British.

    How does one get a hater to stop hating?

    I can be reached at evillageprowler@gmail.com

  • BillJonesBillJones Posts: 33,427 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited March 18, 2018 8:38AM

    I was comming to the same conclusion, @EVillageProwler.

    After his win at the Battle of Hastings, William the Conqueror made an effort to be a more compassionate victor. He tried to learn a bit of the English Language and retained some Anglo- Saxons in positions of authority in the new royal court. In 1067 William returned to Normandy to look after his affairs in his home duchy. Three of Harold’s sons started a revolt, and Danes started to make noises too.

    When William returned to England, he put the hammer down. He mercilessly put down the revolt by sacking and burning villages and ultimately removed every Anglo-Saxon for the ruling class. They were all reduced to peasanty and many were treated as surfs.

    The first Anglo-Saxon revolt was not last. Unrest continued for the rest of William's reign and conditions only got worse for the English majority. The Saxons had to accept William's rule, but they neither liked or respected him.

    The resentment was strong, and since Anglo-Saxons were put down at every turn, perhaps those who labored in the mints let the quality of the coinage fall in at least a partially purposeful act of defiance. The Normans were only a small fraction of the total population, and they couldn’t perform every minor government function.

    It is interesting to note that Henry II was the first Plantagenet king. Over time the kings became more Anglicized and more concerned about the welfare of their Anglo-Saxon citizens.

    Retired dealer and avid collector of U.S. type coins, 19th century presidential campaign medalets and selected medals. In recent years I have been working on a set of British coins - at least one coin from each king or queen who issued pieces that are collectible. I am also collecting at least one coin for each Roman emperor from Julius Caesar to ... ?
  • EVillageProwlerEVillageProwler Posts: 5,859 ✭✭✭✭✭

    BTW, @BillJones, the same thing happened twice in China.

    When the Mongols under Kublai Khan occupied most of China, it is theorized that the modern oceanfaring fleet of China should get destroyed by a typical Pacific typhoon was due to either explicit sabotage or willful indifference by the Han Chinese ship builders. It was this fleet that got destroyed just offshore from the Japanese home islands. Some of you WW2 history buffs would know this as the kamikaze winds.

    After a long while, the rump Chinese nation simply absorbed the Mongol minority and eventually the Yuan dynasty passed on.

    The second time was when the Manchu occupied China, and ethnic Han Chinese (the majority ethnic group in China) also let slide their duty to nation out of resentment to the Manchu. Civil administration stumbled. Military readiness degraded at the frontier regions in the west, southwest and south. Eventually the rump Chinese population simply absorbed the minority Manchu people. In 1911, the last emperor of China (a Manchu of the Ching dynasty) got deposed by reformers led by Sun Yat-sen who wanted to reimpose ethnic Han Chinese control of China.

    How does one get a hater to stop hating?

    I can be reached at evillageprowler@gmail.com

  • SaorAlbaSaorAlba Posts: 7,466 ✭✭✭✭✭

    The Anglish took a bit of a scurrilous approach to modernity with their coinage during that time. Usually when something new in coinage happened in Britain it was the Scots who implemented the change - renaissance portraits, dates on coins etc. and the Anglish followed suit shortly thereafter.

    In memory of my kitty Seryozha 14.2.1996 ~ 13.9.2016 and Shadow 3.4.2015 - 16.4.21
  • BillJonesBillJones Posts: 33,427 ✭✭✭✭✭

    renaissance portraits, dates on coins etc. and the Anglish followed suit shortly thereafter.

    I dare say that this portrait of John, the future British King John, looked at lot more like him that the image of king on the British coins of the period.

    His father, Henry II.

    Retired dealer and avid collector of U.S. type coins, 19th century presidential campaign medalets and selected medals. In recent years I have been working on a set of British coins - at least one coin from each king or queen who issued pieces that are collectible. I am also collecting at least one coin for each Roman emperor from Julius Caesar to ... ?
  • SaorAlbaSaorAlba Posts: 7,466 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @BillJones Yeah, of course it was minted in Ireland. I always liked the reverse of John's Irish pennies - kind of reminiscent of Celtic or Druid symbolism.

    In memory of my kitty Seryozha 14.2.1996 ~ 13.9.2016 and Shadow 3.4.2015 - 16.4.21
  • WashingtonianaWashingtoniana Posts: 278 ✭✭✭

    this is what the "mints" looked like during that period...

  • SapyxSapyx Posts: 1,977 ✭✭✭✭✭

    One reason for the decline in artistic standard was a change in the method of producing the designs on dies.

    The Saxon coins were still using what was in effect the same method the Romans had used: carving the entire portrait onto the die by hand.

    With the Normans came innovation: instead of the laborious process of hand-carving - a process which still didn't make coins that looked as good as the old Roman ones - a design could be made by punching design elements into the coin with a set of punches, with minimal or no follow-up engraving necessary. This would have allowed for much faster die preparation, and also would have given the coinage some much-needed consistency.

    As for the degradation of design during the Anarchy, well, they don't call it "Anarchy" for poetic reasons. It was a mess; most of the country switched sides at least once, some places multiple times. People were on the move, and many people were killed for choosing the wrong side. Skilled, experienced celators would have been hard to come by, and harder to keep. Plus, it was war; the top priority was getting coins made and distributed to the troops ASAP, who cares what they looked like. You can see this effect in other war-torn periods of European history.

    Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.
    Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations"

    Apparently I have been awarded one DPOTD. B)
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