England between the early 970s and 1066 had a remarkable
monetary system, consisting of silver pennies of
standardised type which were reminted frequently. Each
penny carried the name of the individual responsible for
its manufacture and identified where he was based. This
formidable currency came about thanks to unique conditions
in the late 10th and early 11th centuries. An initial
reform by Edgar was followed by a rapid sequence of
recoinages under his son Æthelred II, which constituted
one means of asserting morally responsible governance in
the face of perceived divine displeasure. It follows that the
chronology and motivation behind the coinage need to be
seen as products of central, courtly developments. Actual
minting, however, was a matter of individual moneyers
dealing with individual customers. Here, it is argued that
moneyers and mint‐places need to be seen as part of the
wider landscape of formal and informal social power, and
that production of coin generally came about through
networks of lordship and authority. Integration of the moneyers
(typically drawn from the lower elite) across England
into centrally controlled mechanisms such as the coinage
was one of the underpinning strengths of the late
Anglo‐Saxon kingdom, linking different forms of power
and giving a large swathe of the political community a stake
in the realm's institutions
