Curiously, if you look at the history of money in Britain, Sydney Grew, it did actually effectively disappear for a while during the Dark Ages (400-600 AD/CE), in the precise technical sense that no coins were minted domestically.
British Museum - Money - The Citi Money Gallery - Room 68 The last Roman coins to be struck in Britain were gold solidii and silver siliquae of the emperor Magnus Maximus (383-388 AD) which come from the mint of London, then known as ‘Augusta.’ Following the ending of minting in Britain, supplies of fresh coin had been regularly shipped over from mints in Gaul and the east. The last coins to reach Britain in any quantity were those of Theodosius I and his sons, Arcadius and Honorius. It is safe to say that somewhere around 412 AD there was a break in regular communications between Britain and the continent. Coins of any Roman Emperor, of West or East, later than Honorius occur only sporadically in Britain. Because of the barbarian invasions, coinage in the West of the Empire was, in any case, rather scanty after about 400 AD.
But the story is not one of total isolation. The coin evidence from the 1997 Patching, Sussex, hoard indicates that sporadic trade with Europe was still going on as late as the 460s. Certainly the Chroniclers record several cases of travel to and from the mainland. The presence of Visigothic gold of the emperor Valentinian III (425-455 AD) and silver issues of Majorian (457-461 AD) and Severus III (461-465 AD) take the deposition date of this hoard to possibly as late as 470 AD, a full sixty years into what we have called the Dark Ages.
So, Britain still had some sort of coin economy going well into the fifth century. Coin from Europe was still trickling in through occasional trade – albeit in minute volumes. However, there is also the possibility that the Patching hoard represents booty buried by one of the many Teutonic raiders, in which case it would not be truly representative of a late fifth century British moneyed economy.
This situation persisted until nearly the end of the sixth century when a chink of light finally appeared, with renewed political and commercial links being forged with the Merovingian Franks, and a trickle of Merovingian gold tremisses began to appear in Britain through cross channel trade. These tremisses (one third of a Roman gold solidus) were followed by a native Anglo-Saxon gold thrymsa in about the 630s. By the middle of the seventh century the gold coinage was being increasingly debased with silver – finally giving way to a purely silver coinage of Saxon sceattas by about 675 AD.
So, what happened to coinage between the years 410 and 600 – a period of approximately 190 years? It is easy for us to imagine the Romano-British population as being an oppressed community of neo-Celts living their daily lives under the yoke of Roman occupation. But by the time the Romans left the province in 410 AD they had governed the island for 367 years. To put this into modern terms, it is the length of time from the start of the English Civil War in about 1640 to now! Or, in America, in roughly the same span of time, the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers have changed from dissident English to people who would hardly now regard themselves as anything other than pure American.
In such a length of time, some fourteen generations had been slowly but thoroughly Romanised. Their cultural origins would have been bred out through cross marriages, political indoctrination and simply fading memories. Of course Celtic traditions lived on in the more remote areas of Wales, in Cornwall and in Scotland but, generally speaking, the population of what is now England had become totally Roman. By the fifth century, life would have been conducted in the Roman way. Latin was the language of the courts, big business and the elite of the community. Just as Celtic traditions took a number of generations to melt after the initial Roman invasion of 43 AD so the Roman way of life would have persisted well into the fifth century and beyond.
Apart from the many benefits Romanisation had brought – which could fall under the caption "...and what did the Romans ever do for us?" - the one thing which had proved to be the powerhouse of the Roman Empire was wealth and, apart from land, wealth equalled money, and money was coin and a continuous supply of it in every-day use. History has proved time and time again that when money is in short supply – the people turn to a token or obsidional coinage, no matter how base, rather than do without money as a medium of exchange completely. This has been demonstrated by siege coinages, lead tokens, brass farthings and merchants’ tokens over the millennia.
On many British sites the Roman series is continuous down to Honorius, whereas on others, especially in the extreme north of England, it can break off much earlier; for example at Gratian (367-383 AD) This phenomenon is known as ‘coin drift’ in which the circulation of new issues, and in some cases even the knowledge that there was a new emperor, could take many years to reach outlying areas of the Empire. Of course if the principle of ‘coin drift’ is applied to money after 412 AD then it could be argued that certain areas would have noticed the bite of coin shortage far later than others.
Just how long money continued to be used is guesswork. It probably went on into the very early years of the sixth century. By then, with nothing to buy, no taxes to pay, no business to conduct and society in disarray, money as such would have had little meaning.
The Ormskirk and West Lancashire Numismatic Society - Was There A Coinage During The Dark Ages?Survival itself would have been difficult enough, but the archaeological evidence points to the abandonment of Roman towns and villas in favour of relatively primitive wooden huts. I would guess that money is not necessary for housing, as in the Dark Ages, but the quality of life is inevitably reduced. Nevertheless, West Stow is not that bad, Sydney Grew!
West Stow Anglo-Saxon Village
