In the year 1326, the citizens of London won the Tower, wresting the keys out of the constable’s hands, delivered all the prisoners, and kept both city and Tower to the use of Isabel the queen, and Edward her son. In the year 1330, Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, was taken and brought to the Tower, from whence he was brought to the Elms, and there hanged. In the year 1344, King Edward III., in the 18th of his reign, commanded florences of gold to be made and coined in the Tower; that is to say, a penny piece of the value of five shillings and eight pence, the halfpenny piece of the value of three shillings and four pence, and a farthing piece worth twenty pence; Percevall de Port of Lake being then master of the coin. And this is the first coining of gold in the Tower, whereof I have read, and also the first coinage of gold in England. I find also recorded, that the said king in the same year ordained his exchange of money to be kept in Serne’s Tower, a part of the king’s house in Bucklesbury. And here to digress a little (by occasion offered), I find that, in times before passed, all great sums were paid by weight of gold or silver, as so many pounds or marks of silver, or so many pounds or marks of gold, cut into blanks, and not stamped, as I could prove by many good authorities which I overpass. The smaller sums also were paid in starlings, which were pence so called, for other coins they had none. The antiquity of this starling penny usual in this realm is from the reign of Henry II., notwithstanding the Saxon coins before the Conquest were pence of fine silver the full weight, and somewhat better than the latter starlings, as I have tried by conference of the pence of Burghrede, king of Mercia, Aelfred, Edward, and Edelred, kings of the West Saxons, Plegmond, Archbishop of Canterbury, and others. William the Conqueror’s penny also was fine silver of the weight of the easterling, and had on the one side stamped an armed head, with a beardless face,--for the Normans wore no beards,--with a sceptre in his hand. The inscription in the circumference was this: “Le Rei Wilam;”[71] on the other side, a cross double to the ring, between four rowals of six points. King Henry I. his penny was of the like weight, fineness, form of face, cross, etc. This Henry, in the 8th year of his reign, ordained the penny, which was round, so to be quartered by the cross, that they might easily be broken into halfpence and farthings.[72] In the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th of King Richard I. his reign, and afterwards, I find commonly easterling money mentioned, and yet ofttimes the same is called argent, as afore, and not otherwise.