54 NOTES ON CIVIL-WAR COINS. 



country, but mainly from his headquarters at Oxford, the 

 mint being in New Inn Hall. 



Unlike the case of Chester, where there is an extant resolu- 

 tion of 1645 authorising the conversion of a part of the cor- 

 poration plate into coin for the city's needs, there is no 

 documentary evidence in the municipal archives of Wey mouth, 

 as at present known to me, which would suggest the existence 

 of a mint in that town or at Sandsfoot Castle. It is not 

 improbable that the political complexion of the joint boroughs, 

 which were anti-Royalist as a whole, explains the silence of 

 such local records as are accessible. Be that as it may, we 

 must consequently rely on inferences drawn from a study of 

 the coins themselves. In this connexion I will cite a recent 

 instance where the written word has established the attri- 

 bution to Scarborough castle of a siege -coin which had been 

 previously assigned to Colchester, without, I may add, any 

 obvious reason for so doing. The point was made clear by 

 the publication in 1917 of a contemporary narrative by the 

 governor of Scarborough, who described the circumstances 

 under which the coin in question, a stamped fragment of 

 silver plate, was made. (Num., Chron. 4 Ser. XVIII, 122). 

 So it is perhaps not unreasonable to hope that Dorset anti- 

 quaries may have the good fortune to discover some manu- 

 script testimony which will confirm, and not upset, as in 

 the Colchester case, the conclusions summarised in the follow- 

 ing pages. 



There are in existence a small number of half-crowns 

 struck during this period which bear the letters SA. beneath 

 the horse, the mint -mark* on the obverse being a fleur-de-lys 



* A mint-mark, or privy -mark, is the sign placed on coins by the 

 master -worker of the mint, so that responsibility could be brought 

 home to him if the money was deficient in weight or fineness when 

 tested at the ancient ceremony known as the Trial of the Pyx. Of 

 course no such formal tests were held in the emergency mints of Charles 

 I., but nevertheless a private sign was still engraved on the dies, and 

 was often associated with the heraldry of the locality in which the 

 coins were issued. 



