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1. A shilling struck at the mint in Canterbury during the reign of Eadbald, king of Kent (616- 640).
Medium: Gold Dimensions: diameter: 1.1cm
The designs on the coin are copied from contemporary Continental coins of the Merovingians. The obverse depicts the diademed head of a ruler and the reverse has a representation of the True Cross raised on Golgotha suspended over a globe of the world. King Eadbald, son of King Ethelberht, had initially renounced the new Christian faith, but returned to it later.
Found at Goodnestone, Kent
The earliest coin with the name of an English king
2. After the Romans withdrew from Britain in the early fifth century AD, no coins were struck in Britain for nearly 200 years. Roman coins and coins of various Germanic kingdoms apparently circulated to some extent. Around AD 600, or a few years earlier, coins began to be issued in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Kent. Kent had close ties across the English Channel with the kingdom of the Franks, and the earliest Anglo-Saxon coins mostly imitate Roman or Frankish gold coins.
The earliest Anglo-Saxon coins do not carry the name of a ruler, and it was only in the eighth century that the use of a ruler's name became common on Anglo-Saxon coins. However, a handful of coins are known in the name of Eadbald of Kent (reigned AD 616-40). Eadbald was converted to Christianity in the middle of his reign, and the Christian symbol of the cross and globe on both sides of the coins probably indicates that they date from the latter part of the reign. The legend on the front reads AVDVARLD [or AVDVABLD] REGES ('Of King Eadbald'), while the back appears to have a blundered version of a moneyer's name and the name of the mint of London.