five grains and a half, the penny deble or feeble twenty-two grains and a half, etc.[1]Now for the penny easterling, how it took that name I think good briefly to touch. It hath been said, that Numa Pompilius, the second king of the Romans, commanded money first to be made, of whose name they were called nummi; and when copper pence, silver pence, and gold pence, were made, because every silver penny was worth ten copper pence, and every gold penny worth ten silver pence, the pence therefore were called in Latin, denarii, and oftentimes the pence are named of the matter and stuff of gold or silver. But the money of England was called of the workers and makers thereof; as the florin of gold is called of the Florentines, that were the workers thereof, and so the easterling pence took their name of the Easterlings which did first make this money in England, in the reign of Henry II.
Thus have I set down according to my reading in antiquity of money matters, omitting the imaginations of late writers, of whom some have said easterling money to take that name of a star, stamped in the border or ring of the penny; other some of a bird called a star or starling stamped in the circumference; and other (more unlikely) of being coined at Strivelin or Starling, a town in Scotland, etc.
Now concerning halfpence and farthings, the account of which is more subtle than the pence, I need not speak of them more than that they were only made in the Exchange at London, and nowhere else: first appointed to be made by Edward I. in the 8th of his reign; and also at the same time the said king coined some few groats of silver, but they were not usual. The king's Exchange as London was near unto the cathedral church of St. Paul, and is to this day commonly called the Old Change, but in evidences the Old Exchange.
The king's exchanger in this place was to deliver out to every other exchanger throughout England, or other the king's dominions, their coining irons, that is to say, one standard or staple, and two trussels or puncheons; and when the same was spent and worn, to receive them with an account what sum had been coined, and also their pix or bore of assay, and deliver other irons new graven, etc. I find that in the 9th of King John, there was besides the mint at London, other mints at Winchester, Excester, Chichester, Canterburie, Rochester, Ipswich, Norwich,
- ↑ By the terms force and deble, it is presumed the maximum and minimum weights are intended.
