MINT OUTPUT, 1220–1544

This survey of all the recorded mint outputs of 1220–1544 incorporates many additions and corrections to previously published summaries of output. There are four tables, for 1220–78, 1279–1351, 1351–1485 and 1485–1544, giving the total values of gold and silver coins issued in each mint accounting period to the nearest pound. The tables do not include the London mint’s coinage for Aquitaine in 1325–6 or its Irish issues of 1536–43.

The London and Canterbury mint outputs of 1220–72 were originally published by Blunt and Brand, who noted the months of the accounting periods without giving specific dates. Brand subsequently provided the dates of the accounts for the Short Cross coinage, which ended in 1247. The dates of the accounts for the London and Canterbury mints during the issue of the Long Cross coinage in 1247–78 present some difficulties. In October 1257 a London account ends on the feast of St Fides (6 October) and the next account begins on 1 October. The London and Canterbury account of 1261–2 ends on the feast of St Vincent (22 January 1262) but the next account begins on 18 January 1262. A similar problem of chronology occurs in 1266, when one account finishes on Sunday after the Translation of St Thomas the Martyr (10 July 1266) and the following account begins on 1 July 1266. The accounts for 1272–5 and 1275/6 end on the Nativity of St John the Baptist (24 June) in the year after the final Michaelmas (29 September) of the pipe roll in which they appear, which caused Crump and Johnson to misdate them to 1272–4 and 1274/5 in their tables of the weights of bullion purchased from 1272. Challis’s tables of mint output published in 1992 converted the weights of silver struck in 1220–78 to values of coins issued at an assumed standard of 242d. per Tower pound, but the author has published an alternative series of figures for 1220–47 at the suggested weight standard of 246d. per pound.