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Having considered the depreciation of coin, I will now 
proceed to say a few words upon English coins in general. 
From the time of the Norman Conquest to the reign of 
Edward III, silver pennies 240 to the pound weight were the 
chief coins in use. The coins of William I have a full-faced 
bust, and a sceptre and star on the obverse, and a cross on the 
reverse. The legend is Pillem, or Pillemus, R. Ang. (P being 
the Saxon W.) The coins also bear the Mint Master’s name, 
and the name of the town in which the mint was situated. 
From William I to Henry III, no remarkable change was 
made in the English coinage. During that period the pennies 
were marked with a short cross, but to stop the practice of 
clipping, Henry III introduced the long cross; the coin not to 
be current unless the cross was entire. Before the reign of 
Henry III, the gold coins used in England were of foreign 
manufacture, and were called Bysants. But this King issued a 
gold coin of the weight of 2 silver pennies, which was to pass 
for 20d. But the people objected to this, seeing that gold was 
only 9 times the value of silver, and therefore these coins 
totally disappeared. 
Edward III in 1344 issued a new gold coinage, consisting of 
gold florins, to pass for 6/-, 4 florins=3/-, and } florins=1/6. 
But from being over-valued they did not circulate freely. To 
remedy this, Edward coined Gold Nobles=6/8, and 4 Nobles= 
3/4. The Noble was struck in honour of Edward’s victory over 
the French at Sluys in 1340, and the King appears on the Nobles 
completely armed, in a ship, with his sword drawn in his right 
hand. 
Edward IV coined Angels = 6/8; so-called from their 
bearing on them the Archangel Michael slaying the dragon. 
But time would fail me were I to endeavour to describe 
particularly all the early English coins, and it would be un- 
necessary so to do, because they are all of the same type, being 
made by simply beating out thin plates of silver into a roundish 
shape, and stamping them by a blow with a hammer. The 
image of the King on them was full face, and the features, 
necessarily, somewhat indistinct. This type of coin continued 
