260 



Possibly this may have been the mode of proceeding whilst 

 the silver penny was the only coin fabricated, but it could 

 scarcely continue after the government had determined that 

 new denominations of money should be struck, not only at the 

 Tower mint, but at York and other places in the provinces. 

 One of the conditions of the contract made by King Edward I. 

 in the year 1279 with William de Tournemire, his principal 

 mint-master, was that at each provincial mint he should have 

 under him a master of the mint, he bearing the charges of such 

 mint-master as well as of the keeper of the bullion, [custos 

 platarum,] of the assistant of the melting-house, and of all other 

 persons employed by him ; and it was especially agreed that a 

 house convenient for the business of working should be provided 

 by the king.^ We cannot doubt that the king performed his 

 part of the contract, and that on this occasion permanent build- 

 ings were either erected or appropriated for the purposes of the 

 royal mint at York. Indeed the operations of this establish- 

 ment were now of so extensive and important a character, that 

 they could not have been conveniently carried on without such 

 accommodation. We find it upon record that during the latter 

 years of the reign of King Edward I. whilst he was engaged in 

 the prosecution of his Scottish wars, large sums of money coined 

 at York were sent from thence to the North for the payment of 

 the soldiers and the maintenance of the royal household. In 

 December 1299, the sura of £3000 was transmitted from York 

 to Berwick-upon-Tweed, where Edward and his newly married 

 queen were then staying.^ In June 1300, a large quantity of 

 the base or counterfeit coin, called Pollards, which was lying in 

 the king's exchequer at York, having been received previously 

 to the issuing of the proclamation by which the circulation of 

 them was prohibited, was ordered to be delivered to the mer- 

 chants of the company of the Friscobaldi of Florence, for the 

 purpose of being melted down, partly at York, and partly at 

 Newcastle upon Tyne.'^ In the following month the sum of 



1 Euding, Vol. I., p. 193. ^ LJber Quotidianus, p, 48. 



3 Ibid, p. 67. The society of Friscobaldi of Florence, was one of tbe rich Italian 

 companies which were settled in this country in the reign of Edwaxd I., and were 



