The metals chiefly used were silver and brass, which were at first simply exchanged by weight for commodities of all kinds. As commercial transactions became more numerous and more complicated, this system of payment grew troublesome, and it was found convenient to divide the mass of metal into small parts, which soon took the form of rough coins. But the principle of payment by weight was retained through many centuries, and is perpetuated, though in name only, in the word “pound.”

Records of attempts to organize the coinage of England are found as far back as the Anglo-Saxon period, and it is known that on the dissolution of the Heptarchy the mints were regulated by laws framed in the witenagemot. The first monarch who appears to have dealt successfully with the organization of the coinage was Athelstan, who framed laws for the regulation of the mints, and appointed officers whose titles and duties are then first recorded. The only officers connected with the coinage of whom mention is found before this time are the “moneyers,” who appear to have been alone responsible for the manufacture of the coin; but it is probable that even then there existed some officer who had authority over them. In early Saxon and Norman times the number of moneyers was considerable, mints being established in almost every important town, as might be expected at a period when communication between distant places was extremely difficult. They appear to have been the officers who actually performed the work of making the coin, the mint master in later times contracting with them, at a high rate, for the work. They were responsible for the purity and perfection of the coins produced, as appears from the fact that it was they who were punished (as traitors) in the case of any deficiency in weight or fineness. They had prescriptive rights in the coinage, and in modern times (even so lateas 1850) claimed to have corporate privileges; but it is clear, on the authority of Ruding, that they never were a “corporation” separate from other officers of the mint. 1 The number of mints was greatly reduced after the Norman Conquest, but continued to be considerable until the reign of Richard I., when the work of coining for the whole kingdom was concentrated in the mint in the Tower of London. Only one provincial mint (Winchester) remained till a later date.

An important reorganization of the coinage took place in 1325 under Edward II., the regulations then framed for the manufacture and issue of the coins forming the basis of those still in force. The principal officers under these regulations were—master, warden, comptroller, king’s assay master, king’s clerks, and cuneator. The office of cuneator was one of great importance at a time when there existed a multiplicity of mints, since he had the sole charge of all the dies used not only at the mint in the Tower of London but also in the provinces. He chose the engravers and presented them to the barons of the exchequer in order that they might take the oath of fidelity; he superintended their work, and was generally answerable for the perfection of the dies before they were issued for use in the various mints of the country. The office, which was hereditary, ceased to exist when the provincial mints were suppressed. In its place was instituted the office of clerk of the irons, 1 Among the special privileges which they undoubtedly enjoyed was exemption from local taxation, as appears in a writ of Henry III., which commands the mayor of London not to disturb them “by exacting tallages contrary to their privileges.” Sometimes also houses were allowed to them rent free.

whose functions were more limited, and were not hereditary. This office was only recently abolished.

In the Middle Ages an important duty devolving on the officers of the mint was the collection of the seigniorage which was levied on the coining of money, not only for the purpose of covering the expenses of minting, but also as a source of revenue to the crown which the sovereign claimed by virtue of his prerogative. In former times the collection of the seigniorage was entrusted to the warden, who also superintended the manufacture of the coins, so far as to ensure the proper relations between the moneyers on the one hand and the state on the other. He does not appear, however, to have had any responsibility with regard to the fineness and weight of the coins.

The king’s assay master was specially charged with all matters relating to the accuracy of the standard. The officer next in rank to him was the comptroller, who presented annually to the barons of the exchequer a report of all the gold and silver money struck in the kingdom during the year. These reports, which were always written upon parchment, constitute the chief mint records. The king’s clerk exercised a general superintendence and kept an account of all the mint transactions. As the work of the mint became more extensive and more complicated, other officers were added such as the surveyor of the meltings, surveyor of the money presses, and many others.

The present arrangements with regard to the officers of the mint were made in 1870, when several important changes took place in the mint establishment. Up to that time there had been two controlling officers,—the master, who in some instances was selected on account of distinguished scientific attainments (as in the cases of Sir John Herschel and Professor Graham), and the deputy master and comptroller. A careful inquiry, however, having led to the conclusion that the control of the mint might with advantage be concentrated in the hands of a single officer of experience in the conduct of public business, it was decided, on the death of Professor Graham, to entrust the actual administration of the department to the deputy master,—the office and title of master of the mint being held by the chancellor of the exchequer for the time being, without salary. At the same time the services of a scientific officer were secured, by the appointment of a chemist of the mint. The coining and die department and the melting department were united under the name of the operative department, and placed under a single superintendent. The first deputy master appointed under the new regulations was the Hon. C. W. Fremantle, C.B., to whom the public are indebted for a series of Annual Reports which have given a new and increased interest to the subject of the coinage, and may be said to constitute in themselves a mint literature.

The actual operations of coining in early times were few in number and simple in character. The metals forming the alloy were melted together in the proportion necessary to bring them to the required standard, and the alloy thus obtained was cast into bars, which were reduced by hammering to the requisite thickness. They were then cut with shears into pieces more or less regular in size and form, roughly annealed, and finally impressed with the prescribed device by a blow with a hammer.

The last-named appears to have been the only part of the process which was performed with any great amount of care. The blank piece was placed by the hand upon a die fixed into a block of wood having a large heavy base to resist the oscillation caused by the blow; the die on which was engraved the device for the reverse of the coin was then placed upon the upper side of the blank and held by means of a holder, round which was placed a roll of lead to protect the hand of the operator while heavy blows were struck with a hammer by an assistant workman. One of the earliest improvements in coining was the introduction of a tool in shape resembling a pair of tongs, the two dies being placed one at the extremity of each leg. This avoided the necessity of readjusting the dies between successive strokes of the hammer, and ensured greater accuracy in the impression. It was long before the system of coining by hand was superseded by the coining press, or mill, which, even after its first introduction, was only very slowly adopted. Several attempts were made to introduce machinery for coining before it was brought into active use, the objection to it being its great expense. The mill and screw were finally introduced into the mint under Charles II., when many improvements were also made in the preliminary operations. Steam-power was first applied in 1810, when the vacuum screw-press was introduced. In 1839 Uhlhorn invented the lever-press, which still remains in use.

The subject of the design on coins, besides being interesting both from an artistic and an historical point of view, becomes very important when it is remembered that it is the impression of the coin with the authorized device which makes it legally current. The artistic merits of the design of the early Greek coins are well known, and prove that the dies from which the coins were struck must have been engraved with much skill and care. The form of the coins before being stamped was at first merely that of natural rounded nuggets of gold, or of the silver-gold alloy known as electrum. Such coined nuggets of gold are still to be found among the hill tribes of India. Simple nuggets were afterwards replaced by roughly-fashioned masses like half bullets, a form which rendered it easy to impart high relief to the obverse and comparatively low relief to the reverse of the coins. The early British coins had for their prototype the gold “stater” of Philip of Macedon, but the design of this beautifully finished coin was so roughly imitated by a succession of British copyists that ultimately the wreath round the head of the monarch alone survived, and that in a scarcely recognizable form. It is not only in the early British coins that the influence of classical art may be seen, for it is very evident in some of the present day, the most notable instances being the reverse of the bronze coinage, and the beautiful design of St George and the dragon by Pistrucci, which is still used as an alternative design for the sovereign. It has been ascertained that the impressions on the reverse of very early Greek coins were produced by the rough surface of the anvil or the nail head on which they were placed, while the obverse was struck with the die. A little later the device on the reverse of the coins was obtained by placing the blank piece on small points of metal arranged in geometrical forms which caused corresponding indentations on the coins when struck with the hammer. The beauty and accuracy of design on coins gradually increased as art and manual skill developed, and probably culminated at the period of the Renaissance.

Although it has been the custom since the time of the Saxons to stamp coins with the head of the reigning monarch, it does not appear that any attempt at actual portraiture was made in England until the reign of Henry VII., who, “about the eighteenth or nineteenth year of his reign, did make a great alteration in the form of his coin, upon which his head was now represented in profile, and with a good resemblance of his other pictures.” Since then much care seems to have been taken to stamp the coins with a true likeness of the monarch. In most cases the heads bear a striking resemblance to the portraits drawn by the great artists of the respective periods, and were, indeed, generally designed by artists of eminence. Some of the Milan coinage of Louis XII. is said to have been designed by Leonardo da Vinci, and similar work is attributed to Benvenuto Cellini.

In very early times the silver coins were equal in weight and in tale, each penny weighing 24 grains or 1 pennyweight. The amount now denominated a pound was a pound weight of standard or sterling silver. This principle was in fact, however, not strictly adhered to, the coins frequently falling below the standard of weight. This deviation may possibly have arisen from the imperfection of the methods of manufacture, but Ending (Annals of the Coinage) considers it to have occurred from design, as the deficiency in weight was sometimes made a source of profit. The deviation from the standard weight permitted by law, now called the “remedy,” and anciently called the “shere,” was taken advantage of to a large extent,, so that the coins suffered considerable diminution, particularly when, as frequently happened, they were also “clipped” as soon as they were issued. When these coins were called in they were taken by weight and not by tale, so that the possessors suffered considerable loss. In later times the great improvements in the method of manufacture made it easy to attain far greater accuracy both of weight and fineness; consequently the remedy permitted by law has been considerably reduced, and the possibility of making a large amount of profit by this means proportionally diminished.

The seigniorage levied on the coining of money was not a fixed rate, but varied considerably at different times, and accrued from a deduction made from the bullion coined. It was abolished by an Act of Charles II., which provided that whoever brought sterling silver or standard gold to the mint should receive in exchange an equal weight of current coin, the expenses of coining being defrayed by means of duties levied upon certain commodities of common use. The seigniorage on silver was revived in the reign of George III., when that part of the Act of Charles II. which related to the coining of silver without charge was repealed, and another Act was passed, requiring every pound of silver to be coined into sixty-six shillings instead of sixty-two,—the four shillings realized on each pound of silver by this depreciation of its value being handed over to the master of the mint to defray the expenses of assaying, loss, and manufacture. An Act of William IV. required the seigniorage on the silver coinage to be paid to the credit of the Consolidated Fund, and the charges of the mint to be brought annually before parliament. Against the profit derived by the state from this source must be placed the expense of maintaining the silver coinage in a condition fit for circulation by frequently withdrawing, recoining, and reissuing the silver coins. A vote of £15,000 is annually taken in the mint estimates for the loss on the recoinage of silver.

In former times the work of the mint was performed by contract, the mint master undertaking the manufacture of the coinage at a stated price, and paying the moneyers and other officers and workmen under him at a fixed tariff. The agreement made between the crown and the mint master, called the “master’s indenture,” was sometimes purposely kept secret. This system appears to have prevailed from the reign of Edward I., when an agreement was entered into between the king and the first master of the mint (appointed about 1279). Under this agreement an allowance was secured to the master to cover all the expenses of coinage. Although the master of the mint ceased to be a contractor, the arrangement with the managers continued in force up to 1851.

The work of coinage was transferred in 1810 from the Tower of London, where it had been carried on for many centuries, to the present Mint on Tower Hill, not far from the Bank of England. The head of the department, as has already been stated, is the chancellor of the exchequer for the time being, who is ex officio master of the mint,—the practical direction of the work being placed in the hands of a permanent officer, the deputy master, who is responsible for its due performance. From the English mint is supplied the coinage for the whole of the British empire, including the colonies, with the exception of Australia; the latter and the East Indies are supplied from branch mints established at Sydney and Melbourne, and the mints of Calcutta and Bombay. In addition to the gold, silver, and bronze coins current in the United Kingdom, the English mint strikes gold coins of the value of two dollars for Newfoundland; silver coins of the value of fifty, twenty-five, twenty, ten, and five cents respectively for Newfoundland and Canada; bronze pence and halfpence of special design for Jersey, and nickel pence, halfpence, and farthings for the West Indies. The number of coins of each separate denomination issued varies considerably in different years, the demand for special denominations of coin naturally determining the supply.

The following table (from official sources) shows the value of the gold and silver coins issued during the ten years 1871-81. The total value of the bronze coin issued in the same period is £112,890. [table] [table]

The British sovereign or twenty-shilling piece was first issued by proclamation dated 1st July 1817, superseding the guinea or twenty-one-shilling piece. Crown pieces of the nominal value of five shillings were first struck in the reign of Henry VIII., sixpences and threepenny-pieces are first mentioned in the reign of Edward VI., while the groat or fourpenny-piece was coined as early as the reign of Edward I.; the florin or two-shilling-piece was introduced in 1849. Copper money was first coined by Charles I. in 1665, but does not appear to have been issued until 1672. Copper was replaced by bronze in 1860.

The weight and fineness of the various denominations of coin struck at the Royal Mint is shown in the first schedule of the Coinage Act (33 Vict. c. 10), 1870 :—

[table]

The weight and fineness of the coins specified in this schedule are according to what is provided by the Act 56 Geo. TIL c. 68, that the gold coin of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland should hold such weight and fineness as were prescribed in the then existing mint indenture, that is to say, that there should be nine hundred and thirty-four sovereigns and one ten-shilling piece contained in 20 lb weight troy of standard gold, of the fineness, at the trial of the same, of 22 carats fine gold and 2 carats of alloy in the pound weight troy, and further, as regards silver coin, that there should be sixty-six shillings in every pound troy of standard silver of the fineness of 11 ounces 2 pennyweights of fine silver and 18 pennyweights of alloy in every pound weight troy.

The present standard of fineness for gold, 22 parts fine or pure gold and 2 parts of alloyed metal, was finally adopted in the reign of Charles II., and has remained unchanged up to the present time. Before the passing of the Act determining this standard considerable changes had been made from time to time, the highest degree of fineness having been reached in the reign of Henry III., when the first gold coins were struck of the standard of 24 carats pure gold. The standard of fineness for gold at some different periods may be seen from the following table, which shows the composition of some of the ancient gold trial plates, of which portions are preserved in the Mint :— [table]

The earliest trial plate of which there is any record was made in the seventeenth year of Edward IV. Before that time it would seem...