2 DESCRIPTION OF THE COINS OF EDWARD THE CONFESSOR. 
father’s policy while avoiding its excesses. Peace was preserved, 
justice administered, and the realm increased in wealth and 
prosperity. Its gold work and embroidery became famous in the 
markets of Flanders and France." 
Edward's coins are exceedingly various in type, there being, 
according to Akerman," upwards of five hundred varieties, which 
is not surprising when we remember that the number of moneyers 
in his reign had increased to over 460. In the previous reign, 
that of Harthacnut, they numbered about 120, while in that of 
Harold I. there were over 230. 
Concerning the exact state of the moneyers we are left without 
precise information on the subject, although an extract from the 
laws of /Ethelstan seems to point the moneyer out as the actual 
fabricator of the coin. At any rate he must have been at the 
smithy to superintend its fabrication, for if the coin were debased, 
he was to be punished by having his hand cut off and stuck up 
4 over the mint-smithy.’ We are also without precise information 
as to the manner in which the various mints throughout the 
country were provided with dies for striking coins. From 
a passage in 4 Domesday,' “ it appears that the moneyers received 
dies, and it is implied that they had to go somewhere (generally 
to London) to get them. In later times, at all events from Henry 
II. downwards, the supplying of dies appears to have rested with 
the Exchequer, even in the case of those which were used at the 
London mint, but it has been thought by some that workmen 
provided with patterns were sent to the various towns. But even 
if the types were supplied in this manner, there can be little doubt 
that the process by which the names of the moneyers w 7 ere finall\ T 
transferred to the dies w 7 as in the hands of unlettered people, who 
w 7 ere capable of almost any kind of mistake in cop} T ing any in¬ 
scription, and this accounts probably for the large number of errors 
placed before them 111 the spelling of the names of the Sovereign 
and of his moneyers in the following list. It does not affect the 
question whether these engravers were placing their own names 
upon the pieces or not; because, even if the} 7 were doing so, we 
must suppose them incapable of signing their own names and 
ignorant cf the value of the letters which expressed them. If, as 
is most probable, the great earls and thanes w r ould have been 
*Akerman, Numismatic Chronicle for 1840. 
fBritish Museum Catalogue of Anglo-Saxon Coins, 1S92, p. xcviii. et seq. 
