EDWARD I : CUT HALF

PERIOD: 1279 - 1307 AD LOCATION: LINCOLNSHIRE, UK MATERIAL: SILVER

A piece of Medieval history. 

With thunderstorms interfering rather rudely with the weekly plans of a Digging Wednesday we found ourselves out in the fields at a much later time than usual, seeking our digging fix in the break between the storms. 

Whilst the threat of thunder may have passed through the horizon as we arrived to our permission after 5pm, the constant drizzly downpour certainly wasn’t going anywhere soon. Resigned to the reality of a rainy dig we tramped down the sodden public footpath towards the latest field that we had been slowly tackling over the previous weeks. But appearing through the drizzle wasn’t the field that we remembered, there was no rapeseed stubble adorning every inch of it, instead we were facing the sticky and freshly tumbled landscape of the plough. 

With boots that had grown several inches taller than they should and Ellie ever increasingly starting to look like she’d been swimming in the slippery clay soil, we were slowly pottering our way out along the fields boundary as the rain pattered down heavier and heavier with every new drop. Less than 10m from the corner of the field that saw our exit a real pinger appeared through the drop filled screen of the Equinox 800, a 12 - 13 on the VDI and a quick scan with the pinpointer located it just below the surface of the soil.

With boots that had grown several inches taller than they should and Ellie ever increasingly starting to look like she’d been swimming in the slippery clay soil …

Emerging from a small clump of clay is our long awaited reward for tackling the drizzly and difficult dig. Half of an Edward I Long Cross Penny cut directly and unmistakable down the middle. Medieval Silver and the find of the day to add to our rather mud coated finds tin. 

Dating from 1279 - 1307 this Long Cross Penny shows an interesting reflection of societies slow adaptation to the major re - coinage that was introduced by Edward I in 1279. This re - coinage is possibly the most noteworthy change to currency that was undertaken in the Medieval period and it established a new pattern for the design and production of English coins that lasted for more than 200 years. 

The reason for such a large change to the currency was an attempt to resolve a coinage system that was heading closer and closer towards crisis, and it's a problem that crops up time and time again throughout history causing constant changes to coinage production and design: Small change. In Medieval England prior to 1279 it was pretty essential to have small change but their coinage system consisted almost entirely of a single silver penny. To create this small change this silver penny would simply be cut into half and quarters to create half pennies and farthings and this was pretty much common practice of the time. People had been cutting their coins in half since Saxon Times.

But there was a problem, and that was that this practice of creating cut quarters and cut halves opened up the opportunity for the moneyers, (who were sort of like your Medieval Bank Tenders whose job it was to cut the coins and mint new ones), and other rather unscrupulous members of society to snip extra slivers of silver off during the process and keep them aside for themselves passing the now underweight coin off at face value for a profit. This rather out of control problem known as clipping was damaging and devaluing the currency and was such a problem that it was an act, if caught, that was punishable by death. 

This re - coinage is possibly the most noteworthy change to currency that was undertaken in the Medieval period and it established a new pattern for the design and production of English coins that lasted for more than 200 years. 

So in 1279 Edward I introduced new denominations into the currency, the half penny, farthing and groat, as well as altering the design of the penny to discourage the need for cut quarters, halves and clipping. The central cross that was present upon an English Penny was re-designed solid, removing the voided lines that aided in the cutting, and extending the cross right to the very edge of the coin margins to make it easier to determine the edge of the coin and spot clipping activities. 

However none of these new halfpennies were struck during the initial introduction of the re - coinage, they weren’t actually issued until August 1280 and the scale in which they were produced was very different to the pennies. By the end of 1281, around 82.5 million pennies had been struck at London, but only 2.4 million halfpennies had been struck. It is claimed that the lesser level of production of these smaller denominations was enough to meet the demands of the time and that the practice of cutting pennies did cease as a result of the re - coinage. But as shown by the discovery of our half cut which is one of these new long cross pennies cut into half exactly the same as what they were trying to phase out. This change certainly didn’t happen overnight and society took time to adapt to a fundamental change to their currency system that they had been using for centuries. 

Often our finds, much like this one, reveal a lot more about the local society of the time than is first realised as they are released from their soily grave. The context that they provide to larger events happening to the wider society and how they filter down to local habits reveal hidden stories of a time that’s history is trapped within the tales of its lost objects.