ENGLISH COINS AND TOKENS. BY LLEWELLYNN JEWITT, F.S.A., _Author of “Half-Hours among some English Antiquities;” “Grave Mounds and their Contents;” “The Ceramic Art in Great Britain;” “Corporation Plate and Insignia of Office;” “The Stately Homes of England,” etc., etc._ WITH A Chapter on Greek and Roman Coins, BY BARCLAY V. HEAD, M.R.A.S., ETC., _Assistant Keeper of Coins, British Museum; Corresponding Member of the Imperial German Archæological Institute_. [Illustration] LONDON: SWAN SONNENSCHEIN, LE BAS & LOWREY, PATERNOSTER SQUARE. 1886. COINS OF THE ANCIENT BRITONS. [Illustration] It is not possible to say, with any degree of certainty, at what precise period our ancient British forefathers acquired a knowledge of the art of coining, or into what part of our island that art was first introduced. The probability, however, amounting almost to a certainty, is that the use of money and, consequently, the art of making it, was introduced into Britain from Gaul; and the Kentish coast being the nearest to that country, and receiving friendly and bartering incursions from the Belgic tribes, with whom, doubtless, the natives traded, the natural assumption is that money was known to, and its use appreciated by, the inhabitants of that county long before those of the inland and more northern parts of the island had any knowledge of such a medium as a substitute for ordinary product-barter. Kent may therefore, I apprehend, be looked upon as the district in which money made its first appearance in our country; and, probably, where also it was first made by our Celtic progenitors. [Illustration: “GOTHIC CROWN,” OF QUEEN VICTORIA.] The period which may, with more than ordinary probability; be assigned to the adoption of a home-struck currency among the tribes of our country, is also, naturally, a matter about which only a vague conclusion can be arrived at. The conclusion, however, that has been come to after the most assiduous and searching attention to and consideration of every possible circumstance of locality, analogy of types, and weight, is that that period may be fixed at from a hundred and fifty to two hundred years before the birth of Christ. This, then, for general purposes may be looked upon as the most closely approximate period that the present state of our knowledge has enabled those numismatists who have made this branch of the science their special study to arrive at.