Coinage provides a major source of insight into the administrative and organizational abilities of late Anglo-Saxon England. Maintenance of the integrity of the coinage was a factor of considerable importance to royal prestige.
Mintage rights were completely regalian and counterfeiters were heavily punished. In the second quarter of the tenth century, Athelstan decreed that each burh should have a mint and attempted to limit the number of moneyers. A
Major reform of coinage took place under Edgar in 973 who decreed that 'there shall run one coinage throughout the realm'. Under Aethelred there was a tremendous increase in the output of mints, partly due to the need to pay off large sums of money demanded by the Danes. Great national mints existed at London, Lincoln, Winchester and York. Provincial centres were at Exeter, Stamford and Chester, and Oxford and Shrewsbury were shire centres.
Burhs were originally fortified, walled towns which had proliferated in Alfred's reign and served a military purpose. They were royal in nature and if the king so wished could be made into mints or markets. They became increasingly important as mercantile centres with the development of trade and had their own laws and administration. The extension of English authority into territories held for a generation or more by the Danes was heavily reliant on burhs. Hertford, Northampton, Huntingdon and Cambridge had been fortified headquarters of Danish armies.
Local administration was marked by the divisions known as shires which came under the charge of an 'ealdorman', later a shire reeve or sheriff. Shires were not systematically organized and did not settle into more permanent moulds until the reign of Edward the Confessor. They possessed their own courts and were further split into territorial divisions known as hundreds where courts were also held. In areas of strong Danish settlement these were known as wapentakes.
S. Coates
World History
