Short Cross Penny

The Short Cross Penny shown here is a hammered silver penny of Henry II of England, carrying a crowned royal portrait with the head turned to the left on the obverse and a cross with small crosslets in the angles on the reverse. It is a small, thin coin struck by hand, and belongs to the earlier "Cross-and-Crosslets" coinage that Henry II introduced during his reign.

This type is widely known to collectors as the "Tealby" coinage, after a large hoard of these pennies found at Tealby in Lincolnshire. The penny was the workhorse denomination of medieval England, and coins of this design circulated as everyday money in the second half of the twelfth century. Because they were struck by hand from individually cut dies, no two are exactly alike, and surviving examples are frequently found off-center or unevenly struck.

Henry II came to the English throne in 1154 at the end of a long civil war, and in 1158 he reformed the coinage with a new penny type meant to restore confidence in the currency. That reform produced the Cross-and-Crosslets, or "Tealby," penny, whose reverse shows a plain cross with a small crosslet in each quarter and whose obverse bears the crowned facing or turned royal bust with a sceptre. The type stayed in production until it was replaced by the Short Cross coinage in 1180.

The pennies were struck at a network of royal and ecclesiastical mints across England, with the moneyer's name and mint town named in the reverse legend, a long-standing English practice that made each moneyer accountable for the coin's silver content. The coins are notorious for crude, uneven striking, and complete, well-centered legends are the exception rather than the rule. The great Tealby hoard, containing thousands of these pennies, is the reason the whole coinage carries that nickname today.

Look for a small, thin hammered silver coin roughly 18-20 mm across and only about a gram or so in weight, with a crowned royal bust whose head is turned to the left and a sceptre before the face. The surface is typically irregular and the flan often slightly ragged, since the coin was struck by hand rather than machine.

The defining feature is the reverse: a plain cross reaching to or near the edge with a small cross (a crosslet) set in each of the four angles, giving the "cross-and-crosslets" name. A Latin legend runs around the reverse naming the moneyer and the mint town, though on many surviving coins parts of the legend are weak, off-flan, or blundered. Wear and weak strike usually leave the portrait indistinct while the cross pattern remains recognizable.

Tealby pennies survive in reasonable numbers thanks to large hoards, so value is driven mainly by strike quality, centering, legibility of the mint and moneyer, and overall condition rather than by rarity of the type itself. Crude, off-center, or partially struck coins with weak legends are the most affordable, while well-centered examples with a clear portrait and a readable mint-and-moneyer legend command strong premiums.

Certain mints and moneyers are much scarcer than others, and coins that can be firmly attributed tend to be worth more than anonymous or illegible pieces. As with all hammered medieval silver, values range widely and depend on the individual coin, so treat any single figure as approximate and compare against recent auction and dealer sales for similar strike and condition.