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Mr. PETRIE'S Inquiry into the Origin and 



" A comparison of these types, with those of the English coins, to which I have drawn the at- 

 tention of the reader, will lead us to conclude, that they have been in general copied from English 

 coins, commencing with William I. or II., and ending with John, or perhaps Henry III., and to 

 assign as the probable period of their mintage, the early part of the thirteenth century ; and as the 

 Danes had then no power over, or intercourse with Ireland, it is not likely they were struck 

 by that people, and still less by the English, who had then a very different coinage of their own, 

 and never appear to have struck Bracteate coins in their own country ; and we may therefore, con- 

 clude, that they are genuine and unquestionable specimens of the coins of the native Irish princes, 

 and although a very poor description of coin, highly interesting, as forming a distinct and hitherto 

 unknown class, in the annals of the coinage of Ireland." View of the Coinage of Ireland, p. 24. 



As examples of bracteate coins, in which Mr. Lindsay finds this imitation of 

 the types on the coins of Stephen, Harold, and Henry I., I annex engravings 

 of three bracteates, formerly in the collection of the Dean of St. Patrick's, and 

 now in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy, the two former of which have 

 been given by Mr. Lindsay in Plate IV. of his work : 



I confess, however, that I can see no such resemblance between these, or any 

 other Irish bracteates, and Anglo-Norman prototypes, as would authorize the 

 conclusion at which Mr. Lindsay arrives. That amid a great variety of types, 

 consisting of crosses, and having smaller ornaments within their angles, a few 

 should bear some resemblance to types found on the reverses of coins of the 

 Anglo-Norman kings, is not to be wondered at ; it would be strange, indeed, 

 if some such coincidence did not occasionally occur : but it is too much to infer 

 from a remote similarity, which may be purely accidental, that all those Irish 

 bracteates, which present no such similarity of type, must be ofcotemporaneous 

 date with those in which Mr. Lindsay thinks he discovers it ; and 

 he is obliged himself to acknowledge that he has found nothing 

 like the type on one of those bracteates, except on coins of Offa, 

 757, and Coenwulf, 794. In the bracteate piece represented in 

 the annexed engraving, the original of which also is in the 

 Dawson Collection, we have an unequivocal example of that type, which may 



