9 - The Pre-Reform Coinage of Edgar

Summary

IT is universally accepted by numismatists that a reform of the coinage was put in hand at a national level at some date not very far from the end of Edgar's reign, whether in 973, as was strongly urged by the late Professor Michael Dolley, or just a little later. The result was a coinage of Reform Small Cross type, in which all the coins struck throughout Edgar's kingdom were of a uniform design carrying the king's name and bust on the obverse, and a small cross in the centre of the reverse surrounded by an inscription which provided the name of every coin's moneyer and mint. Design uniformity was further enforced by a new administrative framework under which coin dies were manufactured centrally, initially perhaps at Winchester only. The issue of coins of this Reform Small Cross type continued under Edward the Martyr and into the first years of the reign of Æthelred II, and the coins of the type as a whole received full discussion by Kenneth Jonsson in 1987. It is not therefore necessary to review the Reform Small Cross type as such within the limits of the present paper, but it is proper to note that the evidence that surviving coins of the type provide for the location of mints and moneyers in the reform period is often material in considering the coinage struck earlier in Edgar's reign.