Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/399

TO 1660.] a vast extent. Though betwixt 1630 and 1643 some ten million pounds of silver were coined, it became so scarce that people had to give a premium for change in silver. In 1637 Charles established a mint at Aberystwith, in Wales, for coining the Welsh silver, which was of great value to him during the war. From 1628 to 1640 Nicholas Briot, a Frenchman, superintended the cutting of the dies, instituted machinery for the hammer in coining, and his coins were of remarkable beauty. Charles erected mints at most of his head-quarters during the war, as Oxford, Shrewsbury, York, and other places, the coiners and dies of Aberystwith being used, and these coins are distinguished by the prince of Wales's feathers. Many of these coins are of the rudest character; and besides these there were issued obsidional or siege pieces, so called from the besieged castles where they were made, as Newark, Scarborough, Carlisle, and Pontefract. Some of these are mere bits of silver plate with the rude stamp of the castle on one side and the name of the town on the other. Others are octagonal, others lozenge-shaped, others of scarcely any regular shape.

William Shakespeare.

The commonwealth at first coined the same coins as the king, only distinguishing them by a P for parliament. They afterwards adopted dies of their own, having on one side a St. George's cross on an antique shield encircled with a