SOURCES OF EVIDENCE FOR THE PROCESS OF MINTING

There are no contemporary descriptions of the work of English mints before the thirteenth century, but much can be deduced about the process of minting in Anglo-Saxon and Norman England from surviving dies and the coins themselves. There are scattered references to minting equipment in the mint accounts before 1247, but it is only in the Long Cross coinage of 1247–78 that the first descriptions of the work of the mints are encountered. We have already seen that an exchequer memorandum describes the duties of mint and exchange officials in the recoinage of 1247–50, and that an inquiry into the operation of the Bury St Edmunds mint reveals much about the working of an ecclesiastical mint. In the Edwardian recoinage of 1279–81 the Forma nove monete (‘The Form of the New Money’) and the indenture of William de Turnemire provide a considerable amount of information about the work of the royal mints, and the two versions of the Tractatus nove monete (1286–7 and 1290–1324) are extremely informative about the assaying and valuation of silver in particular. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the records of the royal mints provide a considerable amount of information about mint workshop buildings and equipment.