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| English coins Silver Long-Cross Penny of King Henry III |
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| Long-Cross Penny |
British and old English coins Silver Long-Cross Penny of King Henry III. Coins of the UK, Great Britain Coins, British coins, English Coinage, Long Cross Pennies.
Obverse: Crowned and bearded bust facing, with sceptre in kings left hand, splitting legend. More rounded face with oval shaped eyes.
Legend: HNRICVS REX III (King Henry the Third)
Reverse: Long-cross, splitting legend with four groups of triple pellets in fields.
Legend: IOH-ON-CAN-TER ("Iohan on Canterbury" = "Iohan/John of Canterbury")
Struck by Johan or John moneyer at the Canterbury mint. Mint Year: 1216-1272 (Class 5c: 1251-72)
Reference: S.1369. R!
Diameter: 18 mm; Weight: 1.29 gram of silver.
Henry III (1 October 1207 – 16 November 1272) was the son and successor of John of England as King of England, reigning for fifty-six years from 1216 to his death. His contemporaries knew him as Henry of Winchester. He was the first child king in England since the reign of Ethelred the Unready. England prospered during his century and his greatest monument is Westminster, which he made the seat of his government and where he expanded the abbey as a shrine to Edward the Confessor.
The Long Cross coinage (1247 - 1279 AD)
The long cross series was introduced under Henry III in order to prevent the coinage of the country being clipped and thus reduce the weight and value of the silver content of the coin.
The condition of the money circulating in England in the 1240s was probably as bad as it had ever been. The coins were all of the short cross type introduced more than sixty years beforehand, and the last general recoinage had taken place in 1205. Inevitably a high proportion of the coins were badly worn, but more significantly many were also clipped - an illegal practice performed by unscrupulous individuals, who would melt down the resulting slivers of metal and profit by selling the silver.
The seriousness of the situation is evidenced by the fact that it was the subject of discussion at a great council held at Oxford in 1246. The council deliberated on what measures should be taken, and considered a recoinage financed by debasement of the silver. The attraction of this proposition was that the public could be given back as many pence as they paid into the exchange, an approach repeatedly adopted by France in similar situations. In the event, however, when the decision was ultimately taken to proceed with a recoinage, the silver fineness was maintained. Debasement was rejected on the grounds that it would adversely affect trade, particularly with the Low Countries, where the English coin enjoyed a high reputation.
In order to thwart would-be clippers, it was decided that the new coins would carry a design in which the reverse cross would extend to the edge. If any of the four cross-ends were removed, the coin would be deemed illegal. In practice, however, the measure seems to have been largely ineffective, as many coins are found that fail to meet the legal requirement. In fact some of them seem to have left the mint in this condition, as a result of off-centred striking.
The recoinage itself was greatly facilitated by the king’s brother, Richard, Earl of Cornwall. In return for a half-share in the profits accruing from the project, Richard was prepared to make available his considerable holding of silver bullion to provide the initial stock of new coins. Accordingly, he was granted a licence, and by the end of July 1247 he had provided sufficient bullion to strike 1.6 million pennies.
The terms on which the recoinage was conducted, while lucrative for the king and his brother, were very onerous for the public. Anyone bringing their short cross coins to the exchange would receive only as many new pennies by weight as could be coined from those they deposited, regardless of face value. A further thirteen pence in every pound, over five percent, was charged for the expenses incurred in minting, which included a margin from which the earl and the king derived their profit. A chronicler of the time alleged that the man who brought in thirty shillings worth of old pence (360 pennies) got back little more than twenty shillings (240 pennies) in the new money.
Striking of the new coins began at London in November 1247, with Canterbury and the ecclesiastical mint of Bury St Edmunds participating very shortly afterwards. During the course of the next year, or thereabouts, they were joined by sixteen provincial mints, opened specifically for the duration of the recoinage. With a total of nineteen mints in operation, the recoinage was effectively completed during the period 1248-1250. There remained, of course, an ongoing need for new coin, but the level of demand for it could be met by the permanent mints alone, and the provincial establishments were closed at the end of the above period.
Long-cross Henry III pennies were minted at Bristol, Bury St Edmunds, Canterbury, Carlisle, Durham, Exeter, Gloucester, Hereford, Ilchester, Lincoln, London, Newcastle, Northampton, Norwich, Oxford, Shrewsbury, Wallingford, Wilton, Winchester, and York. These mints were closed in 1250 and the type modified to include the king holding a sceptre, only the London, Canterbury, Bury St. Edmunds and Durham mint remained open. Following Henry III death in 1272 the coinage continued to be struck in his name during the early years of Edward I reign. The long cross also made easier the task of cutting the coin into halves and quarters for change, thus producing halfpennies and farthings, as no round small change would appear until Edward I’s [1272-1307] reform in 1279.
Another feature of this series which has proved useful is the inclusion after the kings name of either TERCI or III, denoting that they belong to the reign of Henry III [1216- 1272]. Unfortunately for identification purposes this practice was not followed in subsequent reigns until Henry VII [1485-1509] included such an indication on his coins.
In 1257, a gold coin was struck to the value of 20 silver pennies. Known today as the 'Gold Penny' the issue was intended to mirror the adoption of gold coinage by Florence, France and Naples a few years earlier. Initially undervalued against silver the coinage this experiment proved unsuccessful. It was revalued at 24 silver pence in 1270, however the majority specimens must have been melted down. All the known examples (less than 10) are struck by the king's goldsmith Willem at the London mint.