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Lydford Pennies

The party discover a treasure of Anglo saxon silver pennies, minted in the time of Aethread the Unready, which are Lydford Pennies. Each gets 12 for a 'reward' and the remainder is used to set up a shipping company in which they get shares. see a FortuneInBeer. Giles inn keeper at the Castle Inn is given 7 for a reward by JackRattenbury. The Castle Inn still has 7 on display to this day [ref]

The rest of the hord is sold to an interested Swedish collector.

[Extract from Lydford.co.uk] Lydford was one of a number of Anglo-Saxon coin-minting centres, that in Lydford being established in about AD 973 (Allan, 2002). Silver rather than gold was the currency metal in England for most of the period 600-1066 AD and beyond, and the Lydford area had rich silver mines; indeed one of the existing roads in the village is still called "Silver Street" . Coins in silver called "Lydford Pennies" ( click here for enlarged views of the two faces ) were minted during the reigns of successive Anglo-Saxon and Danish kings, Aethelred II, Canute, Harold I and Edward the Confessor and were used throughout the Kingdom of Wessex.

It has been estimated (Allan, 2002) that the Lydford Mint produced somewhat more than 1.5 million silver pennies during its operational period from about AD 973 to 1066. But it must be remembered that, initially, every six years and, later, every three years, all existing silver pennies were recalled by the Crown Authority, and pennies of identical size and weight but of changed design were minted from the same silver. There are twenty-one Lydford Silver Pennies in the British Museum and several in the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter, but museums in Scandinavia, especially in Stockholm, contain several hundred Lydford Pennies, mostly, no doubt, the result of the "Dangeld" payment exorted from the Anglo-Saxons by the Vikings more than one thousand years ago.

ref GentlemenAdventurers


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Last edited June 15, 2006 1:38 pm by HowardT (diff)
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