Researches and Discoveries:- I. - A Mediaeval Counter

1 A MEDIAEVAL COUNTER, Obverse and Reverse, enlarged. Original one inch in diameter. Found at Godmersham ( 167 ) RESEARCHES AND DISCOVERIES. I.—A MEDIEVAL COUNTER. A short time ago, in Godmersham Park, my wife picked up a coin which lay on some loose earth at the mouth of a rabbit's burrow. Doubtless it had been scratched out with the soil as the animal was tunnelling beneath the turf. The coin is in excellent preservation; its diameter is exactly one inch. The obverse has a well-executed representation of the Agnus Dei, with the legend MOVTON SVI DE BA in Lombardic characters; while the reverse displays a floriated cross within a quatrefoil, with a cross paty and the word AVE between the cusps. A French gold coin known as the Mouton, and bearing the figure of the Lamb of God (whence the name), was current in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The mouton issued by Edward III. and Henry V. for use in the English possessions in Prance is said to have been of the value of five shillings sterling. The bronze Jetton, or counter, is an imitation of the Mouton d'or. The use of counters simplified the working of arithmetical sums, especially when Roman figures were in general use. Thus Shakespeare, in his " Winter's Tale " (iv. iii, 38), makes one of his characters say, " Every tod yields pound and odde shilling: fifteen hundred shorne, what comes the wooU too ? I cannot do't without compters." [See New Oxford Dictionary.] In reckoning, the counters were placed vertically one above the other, their powers or value being reckoned from the base upwards, instead of from right to left as in ordinary arithmetic, the number of the counters being equal to the units in the coefficients. Our find, unlike the French mouton, being only of latten, I came to the conclusion that it was probably a castingcounter made in imitation of the Mouton d'or; and this is 166 A MSHliEv'AL COUNTER. confirmed by Mr. J. A. Herbert, of the British Museum, who writes : " The coin, as you suggest, is a French Jetton. My colleague Mr. G. F. Hill, Keeper of the Department of Coins, shewed me several examples of the typo, but none with exactly the same spelling of the last word in the obverse inscription. In yours it is plainly MOVTON SVI[S] DE BA. The last word was probably originally BEEBI. . . . The type is described in F. B. Barnard's ' The Casting Counter & the Counting Board,' Oxford 1916, p. 114." I sent Mr. Barnard a copy of the photograph with a covering letter, to which he has been so good as to make the following reply:— " Yes, this is a French Jetton dating probably somewhere between 1350 and 1450. Its type was a favourite one on French and Flemish counters of that period. . . . The meaning of the last two letters (on your piece BA) of the obverse legend is still somewhat in doubt. I have discussed a similar piece on p. 114 (No. 16) of my book. . . . I have, however, no example with BA in the obverse legend ; BE is far more usual. There is no specimen in the French National Collection either with BA. It is doubtless a blunder for BE, which sometimes appears full as BEEEI, and on this last word hangs much argument but no certainty." With the permission of Lord Masham, the present owner of Godmersham Park, Mrs. Woodruff has presented the counter to the British Museum. C. EvELEIGH WOODEUEF. Godmersham, Oct. 11th, 1917. A proof of the above note, together with a reproduction of the counter itself, was submitted to the Rev. R. S. Mylne, B.C.L., F.S.A., Fellow of Royal Society, Edinburgh, Member of Council of the Royal Numismatic Society, Member of the Archseological Society of France, who says be can add nothing, but there can be no doubt that the BA in the inscription is a mistake for BE ; such errors in orthography being by no means uncommon.