Kings of East Anglia Beonna c.758AD Transitional Silver Sceatta /Penny. An important piece

Kings of East Anglia Beonna c.758AD Transitional Silver Sceatta /Penny

S945, 14x15mm, 1.00g.

Pellet in centre, Runic inscription/EFE in Roman characters around saltire cross.

Anglo Saxon kingdom of East Anglia, this is the prototype to the widespread penny denomination which followed. An important piece.

‘In the 750s or early 760s a little-known East Anglian king, Beonna, introduced a reformed coinage with a regal inscription after the Northumbrian model and having on the reverse a geometrical design with a moneyer’s name as on earlier East Anglian issues. The initiative was to be short-lived; it did not survive the Mercian conquest of East Anglia and the imposition of the new penny of Frankish fabric which was to become the staple coin of England throughout the Middle Ages.’ Grierson, p. 36.