3. The Norman Conquest

3.1 Introduction

William I was the illegitimate son of Robert, duke of Normandy. When Duke Robert died in 1035 William was still only a boy, and he had to survive years of anarchy and conflict in the duchy. In 1047, aged only 20, he decisively defeated his rivals for power in Normandy at the Battle of Val-des-Dunes. He visited England in 1051, and later claimed that the Anglo-Saxon king Edward the Confessor (1042-66) had promised to make him his successor. When Harold II took the throne in 1066 William immediately planned an invasion of England, and he triumphed at the Battle of Hastings.

Victory at the Battle of Hastings was only the beginning of the Norman Conquest of England and of the evolution of the new Norman state, the final results of which can be seen in Domesday Book, compiled in 1086. In 1068 William I had to subdue rebellions in Exeter and York, and his army devastated the north of England in 1069-70. The Anglo-Saxon nobility were replaced by Normans, and castles were built to impose Norman power.

The Normans adopted the monetary system of Anglo-Saxon England, with little change in the reign of William I (1066-87). There were at least sixty mints, each of them with mint officials (moneyers), who were usually native Anglo-Saxons. The reign of Henry I (1100-35), which was a period of innovation in government finance, brought much more radical changes to the monetary system.

William I (1066-87) did not intend to conquer Wales, but the barons he placed in charge of the defence of the border gradually extended their power into Wales. Wales did not have its own coinage, but the Norman lords began to make copies of English coins in their strongholds in the 1080s. During the reign of Henry I the coinage came under direct royal control.

The Norman involvement in Ireland began in the 1160s, with the intervention of Norman mercenaries in Irish warfare. Henry II (1154-89) took control of English interests in Ireland in the 1170s, and a coinage for the English territories began under his son John, as lord of Ireland and later as king of England (1199-1216).

3.2 The coinage of William I and Romanesque Art

In late Anglo-Saxon and Norman England the designs or 'types' of the English penny, which was the only coin normally minted, were regularly changed at intervals of a few years. At each change of type new dies were sent to the mints, bearing the name of the mint and the moneyer making the coins. People needing current coins for taxes or other payments had to go to a mint to change their old money into coins with the new designs. This provided a profit for the king.

After 1066 there was no change to the basic form of a facing or profile portrait of the king on one side, and a design usually based upon a cross on the other. A family of goldsmiths and engravers, the FitzOttos, made the dies before and after 1066, ensuring some artistic continuity.

The portraits of William I on his coins were varied at the changes of type, by adding sceptres or swords, or by the use of ornaments such as stars. The designs of the ornamented crosses on the reverse side of the coins gave the designers some scope for creativity, using Romanesque motifs.

39		Silver penny of Edward the Confessor (1042-66) This coin of Edward the Confessor's last type, from dies engraved by Otto the Goldsmith (the founder of the FitzOtto family), was struck in Cambridge.
40		Penny of Harold II (1066) The coinage of Harold II's brief reign ended after the Battle of Hastings, although some of the English mints may have continued to issue his coins for a short time until William I was recognised as king.
41		William I penny, Profile/Cross Fleury type, c. 1066-8 The profile portrait resembles the portrait on Harold II's coinage.

3.3 Henry I reforms the English coinage

Henry I (1100-35) reformed the finances of the English government, establishing the Exchequer to keep proper records of money paid and received for the first time. The king's interest in finance also showed itself in a concern for the state of the coinage. In about 1108 he ordered that all new coins should be cut or 'snicked' on the edge to show that they were solid silver and not silver-plated forgeries, as people had been bending and breaking coins to detect forgeries (44). At about the same time round halfpennies were issued, for the first time since the tenth century, to end the practice of cutting pennies in half to make halfpennies (42-43).

42		Henry I cut halfpenny Hoards of coins of Henry I mostly consist of uncut pennies, which were preferred for hoarding substantial sums of money, but many individual finds of coins of Henry I found in recent years are cut halfpennies, showing that they were common in everyday use.
43		Henry I round halfpenny No surviving examples of the round halfpenny of Henry I were known until the 1950s. About a dozen of these coins are known today.
44		Henry I penny snicked at the edge A coin of the Totnes mint made and snicked in about 1110.

3.4 The Purge of Moneyers

At Christmas 1124 all of the English moneyers were summoned to Winchester, where most of them were castrated and had the right hand amputated, on the orders of Henry I. The king seems to have suspected the moneyers of malpractice, and he acted with typical ruthlessness. Some of the moneyers escaped the drastic punishment by paying large fines (see no. 48).

3.5 The Marcher Lords and Royal Authority in Wales

William I established 'Marcher' lords on the border with Wales, who eventually conquered parts of Wales, building castles to consolidate their control. The king himself led an expedition into Wales in 1081, and later in the 1080s some of the Marcher lords made copies of contemporary English coins, probably to help pay for their warfare.
Henry I (1100-35) took more direct control of the English areas of Wales, opening a mint in Pembroke, which was the centre of a shire administered as an English county.

45		Penny of Cardiff, late 1080s In 1081 the Normans occupied Cardiff and built Cardiff Castle. This is a copy of the PAXS type of William I or William II, made from rather crude locally produced dies by a moneyer with a Viking name (Swein).
46		Penny of 'Devitun', late 1080s The mint is named as 'Devitun', which may be St Davids, the final objective of William I's expedition into Wales in 1081.
47		Penny of 'Fani', late 1080s The name of the mint on these coins is 'Fani', which might be a version of the name of Abergavenny. The Norman Marcher lord Hamelin de Ballon took Abergavenny in 1087 and built a castle.
48		Henry I penny of Pembroke Coin struck by the Pembroke moneyer Gillepatrick. When the sheriff of Pembrokeshire accounted for the evenues of the Henry I's new Welsh county in 1130, they included £2 from Gillepatrick, probably in part payment of a fine imposed to avoid corporal punishment in the Purge of Moneyers.

3.6 The Normans arrive in Ireland

In 1166 Dermot MacMurrough, the exiled king of Leinster, recruited some Norman knights to regain his throne. More Normans arrived in 1169-70, and they quickly established their own lordships in eastern parts of Ireland. Henry II (1154-89) intervened in 1171, leading an expedition to Ireland, and in 1177 he gave the title of lord of Ireland to his son, Prince John. John introduced a coinage for Ireland, with a coin half of the value of the English penny (49). In about 1205 John, who was now king of England, reformed the Irish currency to harmonise with the English coinage in value but not in design (50-51).

49		John as lord of Ireland (1185-99), penny or halfpenny Examples of John's first Irish coinage from the Norman strongholds of Dublin and Waterford. These coins have often been described as halfpennies, as they are about half of the weight of contemporary English pennies, but it is possible that they were pennies on an Irish standard.
50		John as king of England (1199-1216), penny of Dublin In about 1205 King John reformed the Irish coinage, issuing pennies which had the same amount of silver as English pennies, and which circulated freely in England. The king's revenues from Ireland could now be minted in Dublin and spent in England. The moneyer of the coin shown here was an English civil servant called Robert of Bedford, who paid a barrel of wine to the king in 1210 to be allowed to give up the post. The triangle on both sides of this coin is believed to represent the shape of Ireland. The star and moon on the reverse are symbols of the Plantagenet dynasty founded by Henry II.
51		John as king, halfpenny of Dublin The English mints did not produce halfpennies in the reign of John, but the Irish were already accustomed to the use of coins worth half of an English penny, and the issue of them continued. They were not intended to be exported to England to pay the king's revenues, unlike the Irish pennies of John.

3.7 Provenances

Dr William J Conte, collection. Purchased with grants from the Heritage Lottery Fund and the National Art Collections Fund: 41-48

Christopher Blunt collection. Partly accepted by the Treasury in lieu of Inheritance Tax and partly purchased with contributions from the Heritage Memorial Fund, National Art Collections Fund, and the Blunt Family: 39, 51

Bequeathed by J S Henderson, 1933: 49-50

Bequeathed by K A Jacob, 1996: 40