The Farthegn Moneyers
Moneyers were not moneylenders but royal officials that actually produced the coinage for the King. "The best way to achieve immortality in the last century of Anglo-Saxon England", Henry Loyn writes, was "to strike coins." Indeed, the men named Farthegn speak to us today over the span of a thousand years telling us who they were, where they lived, and how they made their living. They "were men of substance, public figures." They "were indeed responsible and prosperous burgesses." "Hints have been found of something approaching a career open to the talents for the ablest group. Their skill and standards were high..." Veronica Smart states that "moneyers were at the top of the scale amongst the burgess class financially and probably socially." This enabled them to hire blacksmiths to hammer out their coins rather doing it themselves. Men like Farthegn "would need a knowledge of the working of the mint in order to administer it and perform effective supervision." They would need special skills and experience to oversee minting and exchange. There are indications that these men named Farthegn were related. The occupation of moneyer could very well have become the family profession carried on from generation to generation. Most of the following moneyers were found in J.J. North's English Hammered Coinage and the St. Andrews Database Index of Coins:
Farthein / Farthen / Fardein / Farden / Carthen(sic) (the variatons in spelling may indicate more than one moneyer) was appointed by King Eadgar to mint silver pennies between 959 A.D. and 972 A.D. Henry Loyn writes in The Vikings in Britain, "For a people with no native coinage the Scandinavians took early to the use of coins. Already by the last decade of the late ninth century coins were struck in Danish occupied England...".
Farthegin - moneyer for Edward the Martyr in Lincoln from 975 to 978. It is believed that King Edward's stepmother had him murdered so that her son Aethelred II would have the throne. He became known as Edward the Martyr.
Fartheng / Faerthen / Ferthen - moneyer(s) of King Aethelred II in Lincoln from 979 to 985 A.D. A great number of coins were struck during this period in order to pay the Danegeld. Unable to placate new waves of Scandinavian invaders, Aethelred II insanely ordered the murder of all the Danes living in England. It is not known if Fartheng or his family escaped the massacre, but it is clear that only a fraction of the Danes were killed, and within a few years, the first Scandinavian King of all England sat upon the throne.
Ferthen struck coins at Thetford in Norfolk for King Cnut from 1017 to 1023.
Farthein / Faerthein / Faerthen / Farthin - moneyer(s) for King Cnut from 1017 to 1035 and for King Harold I from 1036 to 1042 in York. During the tenth and eleventh centuries at least 5,000,000 silver pennies must have been in circulation at any given time in England. When Cnut became king he sent Farthein to help establish a mint in the town of Lund, Denmark (today Lund is part of Sweden). As a result, Lund grew and flourished and became the most important mint town is Scandinavia.
Faerden / Faerthen / Farthen struck the royal coinage for King Cnut and his sons, King Harold I and King Harthacnut, from 1017 to 1042 in Huntingdon.
Fardein was authorized by King Stephen to mint his coins in Bristol from 1136 to 1141. When civil war broke out, the western half of England declared loyalty to the Empress Matilda and the town of Bristol became the headquarters of her Angevin Party. Supporting the Empress, Fardein minted coins with her name on the obverse side in 1141. His name was engraved on the reverse side (spelled Farden). Only a dozen moneyers were brave enough to advertise their allegiance to the rebel cause in this way. Eventually, Matilda and her supporters would negotiate to have her son Henry be crowned the next King of England after Stephen had died. The risk that Fardein had taken was well worth it, for Henry would be the first in a long line of fourteen Plantagenet kings. Their reigns would stretch over more than three hundred years of English history. The fact that this Farthegn became established far outside the bounds of the Danelaw is shown by the listing of at least four of his sons in numerous documents. James and Roger were in Bristol, Reinfrid was listed in Somersetshire, and Radulf was in Worcestershire.
Radulphus Fardein was a royal moneyer for the Exchequer in 1248. He was descended from the Bristol moneyer Fardein and was most likely descended from Farthegn's son Radulf. King Henry III felt that England was in dire need of a complete recoinage. A new coin design was decided upon and the number of mint towns increased to 18. One of these towns was Ilchester, Somersetshire. 24 townsmen elected Radulf Farthegn and three other moneyers to represent the town and to help create what amounted to be a local exchequer patterned on the much larger Royal Exchequer at Westminster. In 1248, Radulf traveled to Westminster and presented himself before the Barons of the Exchequer to take the oath of office. A special die was made for him at London with his name on it. Not long after Radulf's coins were minted, two important events occurred in England's monetary history. First, the King decreed that moneyers' names should no longer be engraved on their coins, making it impossible to assess each moneyer's contribution or to trace his career. Second, round ferthings were just beginning to be minted for the first time, making it unnecessary to cut up a coin in order to make change. Coincidentally, it was at this time that the Farthegn family started to be called the Ferthing family.