Page:History of Manchester (1771), Volume 1, by John Whitaker.djvu/316

 Chap; IX. OF MANCHESTER, '285 chefter >. The inftruments of coinage appear to have been the fame as continued among us nearly to the prefent period, the round piece of metal being damped with the ftroke of an ham- mer above, and at the fame time receiving another impreffion from a die below 6. .And, the metals that were coined were ge- nerally gold filver and brafs Mines of filver and gold were worked in the ifland during the reigns of Auguftus and of Tra- jan 8. A gold mine was actually difcovered a few years ago at Ampthill in the county of Bedford and within the territories of Cunobeline 9. And the Britifh mint adopted at once all that variety of metals in its coins to which the Romans were feveral ages in afcending. All the money of the Roman ftate was merely brafe for nearly three hundred years together, the coin- age in filver commencing only five years before the firft Punic war, and the coinage of gold not.fucceeding till more than iixty years afterwards xo. And about thirty of thefe coins of Cunobe- line have defcended tt> us. . Some of them exhibit a plane fur- face, but moft of them bear a finall convexity ". And few of them carry a fine texture in their compofition, the metals being too much debafed with foreign mixtures "„ That the art of minting was thus introduced into the ifland from the Roman continent* is abundantly evinced by. the in- fcriptions and the faces of thefe coins. The devices are many of them undoubtedly Roman, janufes, fphinxes, centaurs, pe- gafufes, and laurel-wreaks* The letters upon them are all de- rived from the Roman alphabet,, and, what fuperfedes all further .argument, fome of the infcriptions are even written in the Ro- man language I3. And that the art of minting was introduced by Cunobeline, wc have every, reafon to fuppofc, ask muft have •been introduced after the invafion of Caefar, as Cunobeline lived in the reigns of Tiberius and Caligula ,+, and as he is the earlteft monarch of the Britons whofe coins we have difcovered. The art muft have been introduced before the death of Cunobeline and the furrendcr of Camulodunum to the Romans. . The death;
 * of the king happened, before the furrendpry of the, capital ^aml

the capital was, taken in the autumn. of 43 l$. And had Cuno- 4 " bcline » » 4