In Anglo-Saxon Coins G. Van der Meer has set out in a convenient and readily accessible form the sequence of six sexennial issues (and minor transitional types) which I had worked out during the preceding decade for the coinage of Æthelred II. For the Crux issue (Brooke 3; BMC iii.a; Hild. C – cf. North 770; Seaby 667) the period of issue which I had proposed is from the autumn of 991 to the autumn of 997. I wish now to examine the bearing that some new evidence has on the dating of this issue, but before doing so I need to clarify a controversial feature of the identification of types that is the basis of my chronology for the reign. The six substantive issues which I had distinguished after studying a large number of hoards preserved intact in Sweden are First Hand, Second Hand, Crux, Long Cross, Helmet and Last Small Cross, but others, notably Mr C. E. Blunt, Mr J. D. Brand and, more seriously, Dr Bertil Petersson, have sought to establish that Second Hand is no more than a late variant of a single Hand issue. Each of them has his particular argument to be answered, but first of all there is the relative scarcity of Hand coins generally that has to be explained, for Hildebrand has described a total of only 483 First and Second Hand coins combined, including only 192 of the latter, as against 790 Crux and 940 Long Cross pieces. To my mind there is a quite simple historical reason. Hand coins according to my chronology are ascribed to the 980s: their relative paucity in Viking hoards is surely to be accounted for by the fact that really massive Danish attacks upon England did not begin until the 990s, while it was not until 991 that Danegeld as such began to be paid.