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The good reputation of the English coinage during the mid-thirteenth century gave rise to it being copied on the continent, with most imitations originating in Frisia or Westphalia. Some of the imitations are good enough to be easily mistaken for English coins, others less so.

An unrecorded York mint penny for the Leaf Mascle issue 1432-1436 of Henry VI first reign.

The two coins in this article are both ‘newly identified’ sub variants within the Tower issued Charles I Shilling’s (Issued under Parliament) It is the hope both these coins can be considered additions into Michael Sharp’s BNJ 47 article 1977 and to complement the update article by Holt, Hulett and Lyall BNJ 84 2014. Both coins are of good silver with weights illustrated.

The collector gains inspiration and enthusiasm for the acquisition and study of coins and medals from many sources. Whilst chief among these are numismatic texts, catalogues and mentors, seemingly unrelated and serendipitous experiences may impinge upon the mind, and forge a link with numismatic musings. This confluence of ideas can have a productive outcome, as I hope is the case in the example offered in this note.

This had originally intended to be a short note and die study of the shillings issued by the Welsh Copper company between 1723 and 1726. However, whilst most collectors and catalogues are aware of this short series, the background story, with just one notable and recent exception seems to have fallen through the gaps in the numismatic literature. The note will begin with an historical overview of metal exploitation, especially Welsh copper and silver and their contributions to British coinage, followed by the Welsh Copper Company and finally the die study of the shillings struck at the Tower Mint struck from their silver.

It is now almost forty years since N. J. Mayhew published a masterly study of the coinage produced in Northern Europe in the late 13th and early 14th centuries imitating the English sterling. This, the first major publication on the subject written in English, carried references to the works of earlier authors many of which are rather inaccessible to present day collectors of these sterling imitations. Mayhew had been unable to find a coin to illustrate in his book for example M50 although he had records of its existence. Such a coin, recently bought by the author from Jean Elsen et ses Fils, Brussels, provided an interesting field for research using information from foreign authors of the 19thand 20th century.  

This note draws attention to the content of a notebook, now held in the British Library  compiled by Rev.Rogers Ruding (1751-1820), author of Annals of the Coinage of Britain and its Dependencies, in which Ruding recorded detailed information about a total of 356 Anglo-Saxon coins that were in the British Museum collection by the mid 1790s. The notebook shows that a significant number of coins in the British Museum collection today which up to now have had “undated” provenances were already in the British Museum before the end of the eighteenth century.

These notes highlight two discoveries made while the present writer was working on the coinage of Harold II prior to the publication of his major article on this coinage in 1990, but which were only referred to incidentally in the article concerned. They show the utility of die-study in relation to the later Anglo-Saxon coinage.