Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XI.djvu/634

 616 MINT (M. Canadensis), is a common plant in damp places from Kentucky northward ; it has hairy stems and leaves, and flowers in axillary whorls ; its taste and odor are like those of pennyroyal. A smooth form of this, which has been called M. borealis, has a pleasanter odor. MIT (Ang.-Sax. mynet, from mynetian, to mark), a place where money is coined by a government. The early methods of coining money were exceedingly imperfect. The met- al, brought to the required standard of fine- ness, was melted and cast into small bars, which were reduced to thin plates under the hammer. Square pieces cut from these plates were rounded at the forge, and then by means of rude dies, one fixed like an anvil, and the other held in the hand and struck with a mallet, the round lump of metal was flattened and coined at the same time. The coins were apt to be irregular in weight and form, and not entirely round, and were liable to be clipped. It was not until the middle of the 17th cen- tury that the forge and the hammer gave way permanently in France and England to the mill and screw. In Britain, in the 1st cen- tury of the Christian era, Cunobelin, king of the countries lying between the Thames and the Nene, established his mint at Camulodu- num (Colchester), and there coined money of gold, silver, and brass. In early Saxon and Norman times establishments under the crown for the coinage of money existed in almost every important town. In the reign of Ethel- red II. (978-1016) there were 38 mints, and in that of Canute (1016-1035) 37. In those days communication between the different parts of the realm was at once difficult and dangerous, and it therefore became important to have the sources for the supply of money for the vari- ous districts within those districts. After the Norman conquest the number of these mints was gradually reduced, so that in the reign of Henry VI. (1422-'60) the only ones in England were at Bristol, Canterbury, Coventry, Durham, London, Norwich, Oxford, and York; in the reign of Henry VII. they were only at Canter- bury, Durham, York, and London ; and it is supposed that in the time of Elizabeth all coins were made at the mint in London. But when, in the reign of William III., a very extensive coinage of silver took place, several local es- tablishments outside of London were employed. Athelstan appears to have been the first mon- arch who established any regulations for the government of the mints of the kingdom. His law, proclaimed about 928, provided that but one sort of coin should pass current, and grant- ed to various towns each a number of coiners or moneyers, and to boroughs of inferior size each one moneyer. All provincial mints re- ceived their dies from the mint of London. The moneyers coined money and distributed it, received that which was clipped or worn, and bought bullion, the right to do which the monarch claimed as his own exclusive privilege. The moneyers seem in those early times to have had almost entire control of the mints. Their names were stamped upon the coins, as a guarantee of their genuineness, as early as the time of Egbert, king of Kent, about the middle of the 7th century. Edward II., in the 18th year of his reign, made a considerable change in the organization of the mint. He appointed a master, warden, comptroller, king's and master's assay master, and king's clerk ; and under this constitution it continued sub- stantially till 1815. From an early period in English history, the clergy of the superior ranks shared with the king the prerogative of coinage ; the bishops of Durham had for cen- turies enjoyed the privilege of coining sterlings and pennies, and about 1473 the then bishop, who did not consider himself authorized to coin halfpence without obtaining the king's permission, applied for it, and it was granted. During the civil war in the reign of Stephen, when the country was in great disorder, almost every baron usurped the prerogative of coining and issuing money, which consequently became very much debased. In 1156 Henry II. issued a new coinage, and prohibited the use of any other money. Hammer money passed current in England until the reign of William III., al- though the system of milling had been intro- duced from France in 1562, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth ; but it remained in practice only ten years, when the old system was again resorted to on account of its greater cheapness. The invention of the mill for coining is attrib- uted to Antoine Brucher, a French engraver, who first tried it in Paris, in the palace of Henry II., for coining counters. It was con- tinued in use till 1585, in the reign of Henry III., when it was abandoned on account of its expense. In 1631 a commission was appointed in England to examine into the process of coin- ing milled money proposed by Nicholas Bryitt of Lorraine ; but nevertheless all coins contin- ued to be hammered till 1662 or 1663, when the milling process was finally and permanently adopted ; and Bryitt seems to have been ap- pointed chief engraver to the mint, and to have put the system into practice. It had already been adopted in France in 1645. The early milling ope- rations employed four different machines : the rolling mill, for laminating the metals to plates of the proper thickness ; the punch- ing-out machine (fig. 1), for cutting out the blanks or planchets ; the machine for milling the edges (fig. 2) ; and the coining press (fig. 3), which stamped the impression on both sides at once. The hammer money which was called in by William III. had been so much clipped and filed as to have lost about half its value. FIG. 1. Punching-out Ma- chine.