ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS 



venerated by the early Christian Church, and this may add significance to 

 the fact that his coins have been found in England mounted as pendants.' 



About forty years ago a necklace now in the British Museum was 

 found in an Anglo-Saxon grave at Sarre in Kent, consisting of coloured 

 glass beads and five gold pendants, four of which were coins. By a 

 happy coincidence three of this number bear the image and superscription 

 of the eastern emperors already mentioned, Mauricius and Heraclius 

 while the fourth is a coin of the Prankish king Chlotaire II. (613-628) 

 The Sarre specimens which are simply looped, are excelled by the 

 Norfolk finds with their garnet cell-work. Though a cruciform pendant 

 almost identical with that from Wilton but without the central coin, has 

 been found so near as Ixworth in Suffolk,^ nothing of quite the same 

 pattern has occurred among the rich discoveries of Kent, but it is yet 

 permissible to assume a close connection between all these specimens as 

 regards their use, their origin and workmanship. 



In his description of the find at Sarre,' Roach Smith remarks that 

 the gold coins of the eastern empire called solidi had been introduced 

 about the year 325, though most of the pieces that found their way to 

 the north-west of Europe belong to the fifth century and specially to its 

 second half.* This was the period of the Gothic and Hunnish ascendency, 

 and it has been suggested that the minted gold may have passed into 

 Teutonic hands as tribute. Whatever the reason, it is certain that early in 

 the seventh century the Merovingian kings began to coin gold, and took 

 as their model the Byzantine solidus. It may well be that the Norfolk 

 pieces were struck by Chlotaire himself, who was a contemporary 

 of Heraclius ; and they may further be said with some confidence to 

 have been mounted almost as they are to-day about the middle of the 

 seventh century. Some light is hereby thrown on the date of two other 

 coin-pendants in the national collection. They enclose gold coins of 

 Valens (364-378)," and Valentinian II. (375-392);' and though closely 

 resembling the Bacton specimen in form, are ornamented in the Kentish 

 style with a geometrical design of garnets, and probably date from the 

 seventh century. Nor is the place of manufacture less easy to fix within 

 certain limits. Authorities agree that the Kentish jewellery surpassed all 

 other efforts of Teutonic goldsmiths here or on the continent, and four of 

 the five jewels mentioned bear all the characteristic marks of a Kentish 

 origin. Granted that the barrel-shaped loop of coiled wire has also been 

 found on garnet pendants in Northamptonshire, in Derbyshire and Wilt- 

 shire,' the noble series from the King's Field, Faversham, convinces us 

 that this rich and dainty cell-work with its gorgeous play of colour, 

 had its home in Kent from which it seldom spread abroad. But a 

 comparison of the two Norfolk pendants shows that while the method is 



' Joumal of Bfitish A rchieob^cal Association, vol. viii. p. 140. 



2 Figured and described in Roach Smith's Collectanea Anltqua, vol. iv. pi. zzxviii. fig. I. 



3 Archaohgla Cantiana, vol. iii. p. 38, pi. ii. 



* Sophus MUller, Nordlsche AltertUmer, vol. ii. p. 205. 



* Locality unknown ; figured in Archaologia, vol. xxxii. pi. 7, fig. 2. 



^ Found in Staffordshire. ' Pagan Saxondom, pi. i. fig 3 and pi. xl. fig. 4- 



343 



