another coin to dream about folks............
Anglo-Saxons, Eadbald of Kent (616-40), gold shilling, Canterbury mint, c.625
Obv. REG[ ]N[V?]ALD or [ ]N[ V?]ALD / REG[ ], diademed bust right; rev. +DOR[ ]NIS.M (for Dorovernis, Canterbury), cross-on-globe (unique, unpublished); 1.28g, c.74% gold (based on SG analysis). Found Goodnestone, Kent, Sept. 2001.
This exciting new coin, from the very earliest phase of Anglo-Saxon coinage, shows that coinage was being struck at Canterbury during the reign of Eadbald, son of King Æthelberht who received the mission of St Augustine. The five coins of Eadbald previously known were struck at London, and have a stylised version of the same bust/cross-on-globe design. This new coin seems to have been the prototype, struck at the kingdom of Kent’s capital. Only one coin naming Canterbury as its mint was previously known from the period before the ninth century, and that too showed strong Merovingian influence in its design and style. Unfortunately the obverse inscription is incomplete, and it is debateable whether it is rendering a version of the king’s name and title (Audvald regis) or the name of a moneyer (Regenvald).
Anglo-Saxon, AD 616-40
Minted in London, Kingdom of Kent, England
The earliest coin with the name of an English king
After the Romans withdrew from Britain in the early fifth century AD, no coins were struck in Britain for nearly 200 years. Roman coins and coins of various Germanic kingdoms apparently circulated to some extent. Around AD 600, or a few years earlier, coins began to be issued in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Kent. Kent had close ties across the English Channel with the kingdom of the Franks, and the earliest Anglo-Saxon coins mostly imitate Roman or Frankish gold coins.
The earliest Anglo-Saxon coins do not carry the name of a ruler, and it was only in the eighth century that the use of a ruler's name became common on Anglo-Saxon coins. However, a handful of coins are known in the name of Eadbald of Kent (reigned AD 616-40). Eadbald was converted to Christianity in the middle of his reign, and the Christian symbol of the cross and globe on both sides of the coins probably indicates that they date from the latter part of the reign. The legend on the front reads AVDVARLD [or AVDVABLD] REGES ('Of King Eadbald'), while the back appears to have a blundered version of a moneyer's name and the name of the mint of London.
