Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 1.djvu/50

48 One shows what evidently appears to be a workman in the act of making money; he is seated in a chair, and holds a hammer in his hand, while a number of pieces lie before him. About forty of these coins of Cunobeline have been discovered. Many others also exist, which, from the names, or fragments of names inscribed on them, have been assigned to Boadicea, Cartismandua, Caractacus, Venutius, and other British sovereigns. The legends on most of these, however, are extremely obscure and dubious. What is somewhat remarkable is, that no two, we believe, have been found of the same coinage. They are almost all more or less dish-shaped, or hollowed on one side—a circumstance which is common also to many Roman coins, and may be supposed to have been occasioned by the want of the proper guards to prevent the metal from being bent over the edges of the die by the blow of the hammer. The British coins thus inscribed with Roman characters are some of them of gold, some of silver, some of bronze, some of copper. Unlike also to the coins, mentioned above, without legends, all of them that are formed of the more precious metals are much alloyed.

It must be confessed that the whole subject of these supposed British coins, notwithstanding all the disputation to which they have given rise, is still involved in very considerable obscurity. It has even been denied that they ever served the purposes of a currency at all. "They are works," observes a late writer, "of no earlier date than the apostasy and anarchy after the Romans. Moreover, they were not money. They were Bardic works belonging to that numerous family of Gnostic, Mithriac, or Masonic medals, of which the illustration has been learnedly handled in Chifflet's 'Abraxas Proteus,' Von Hammer's 'Baphomctus,' the Rev, R. Walsh's 'Essay on Ancient Coins,' and (as applicable to these very productions) the Rev. E. Davies's 'Essay on British Coins.' The coins engraved by Dom. B. de Montfaucon as remnants of ancient Gaulish money are productions of similar appearance and of the same class. Paracelsus alludes to them as money coined by the