Description
Challis, C. E. The Tudor Coinage. Manchester University Press, 1978. Octavo, pp. xii, 348; illustrations in the text. Casebound, jacket. Second hand, virtually as new.
The production and circulation of money are now taken very much for granted, and it is difficult to imagine the mastership of a mint being profitable sinecure for a royal favourite, or the need for proclamations throughout the realm explaining how to distinguish issues of different denominations. Yet these were facts of life in Tudor England, where all too often the currency was exploited by Crown and subjects alike.
In the fullest survey of the Tudor coinage yet undertaken, CE Challis examines the structure and organisation of mints, those who worked there, the size and composition of circulation medium, the fiscal exploitation of the coinage and prevalence of clipping and counterfeiting. Economic and artistic developments combined with the changing fortunes of politics to produce a bewildering variety of issues, which are clarified by the author’s partly chronological and thematic approach.
