Coins, Historical Medals and Antiquities

Kings of Mercia, Offa (757-96), Penny, Light coinage, Phase IIc, Canterbury, Babba, cuirassed bust right, serpent above, offa rex in two panels either side of head, rev. b b b a in ringed circles within the angles of long cross botonnée, additional a placed over terminal of cross limb at 3 o’clock, 0.99g/6h (Chick –; Naismith Revisited –; Naismith & Naylor –; N –; S 905). Some very light porosity, otherwise very fine, full round flan, extremely rare £3,000-£4,000

Provenance: Found near Marden (Herefordshire), February 2022 (PAS NMGW-D677C1; EMC 2022.0066)

Despite the lack of mint-signatures appearing on coins during the late eighth century, the moneyer Babba can be associated with the city of Canterbury with some confidence. Aside from working under the Mercian kings Offa and Coenwulf, Babba also signed coins for two independent Kentish kings: Ecgberht II (Chick 85) and Eadbehrt Præn (Naismith C4). It is surprising, therefore, that the coin of Babba offered for sale here was struck from dies very close in style and design to those employed by the London-based moneyer Pendred (Chick 67-8). While the majority of the dies used by Canterbury moneyers were cut locally, minting equipment was, on occasion, supplied from London. Two of Canterbury’s more prolific moneyers, Eoba and Ealred, both regularly received London portrait dies of high artistic quality. Although this arrangement was confined to the start of Offa’s light coinage, and appears to have been intermittent, it probably reflects the extraordinary position that these men held within the Canterbury ‘mint’. The coin offered for sale here appears to be the product of an altogether different set of circumstances. To judge from the surviving corpus, Babba never reached the levels of prominence or productivity achieved by his more favoured colleagues, and thus is unlikely to have been selected for preferential treatment.
Until the discovery of this coin, Babba was known exclusively from non-portrait pennies. This previous arrangement fitted neatly within the general framework of Offa’s coinage, whereby numerous moneyers either made use of just portrait obverse dies, or just non-portrait dies, and not a combination of the two. Babba’s new portrait penny breaks what otherwise appears to be clear pattern of preference for the moneyer. Of further interest is the reverse die used to strike this coin, which appears to have been modified to accommodate the moneyer’s name (evident most clearly in the placement of the additional ‘A’ over the cross end terminating at 3 o’clock). It would seem that neither of these dies was originally intended for use by Babba, and that they came into his employment second hand. How and why this came to be remains unfortunately obscure. Regardless, this new and extraordinary penny of Babba represents an important new piece of evidence for informing our understanding of the relationship between moneyers, mint-towns and engravers during the late eighth century.


Works cited:

Chick, D., 2010. The Coinage of Offa and his Contemporaries (London)
Naismith, R., 2010. ‘The Coins of Offa Revisited’ BNJ 80
Naismith, R., 2011. The Coinage of Southern England 796–865, BNS Special Publication 8, 2 vols. (London)
Naismith, R., 2012. Money and Power in Anglo-Saxon England: the Southern English Kingdom 757-865 (Cambridge)