A HISTORY OF LONDON Fig. 20. — Dump of Lead and Impressions of Coin Dies, St. Paul's Churchyard (i) substance to prevent the pin falling out of the hair or the folds of a garment. The head might be mistaken for a coin, but is plain at the back, and has a device in somewhat high relief, representing a head to left, in front of which are two crosses composed of dots, of the Latin and Greek form respectively, which may be intended for the ball and cross. This is not known as a coin-type, but the curious round helmet closely re- sembles that on Ostro- gothic coins of copper dating from the sixth cen- tury, and till other examples come to light the pin here figured may be considered contemporary. It may be added that the bronze is by no means pure, and evidently contains a large proportion of lead, no doubt added to facilitate casting. The leaden trial-piece here illustrated (fig. 20) was found during the summer of 1841 when a sewer was being cut 'opposite the pastrycook's shop at the corner of Canon Alley,' on the north side of St. Paul's Churchyard, and passed into the national collection in 1856 with the Roach Smith collection of London antiquities."^^ It is a 'proof of a die for a penny of King Alfred cut by the moneyer Ealdulf, and the two deep furrows on the obverse may be taken to show either that the design was rejected or that the impression was obliterated so as to be of no use to a forger. No coins from this die have in fact been found, but very close parallels for the obverse and reverse may be seen in the British Museum.-^ The name Ealdulf occurs as that of the moneyer on an extant coin of Alfred {Cat. No. 287), and a century and a half later another of the name, perhaps a descendant, was striking money in London for Edward the Confessor {Cat. No. 966). One Eadulf, perhaps the same as Ealdulf of the trial-piece, was working under ^Ethelbert, the elder brother of x^lfred ; and this is rendered all the more probable by the fact that the type also occurs among the coins of Ceolwulf II, king of Mercia," who reigned only one year (874), so that the trial-piece must have been struck in the opening years of Alfred's reign. A trial-piece of another kind found in the City is here illustrated (fig. 21). It consists of a fragment of bone, probably from a rib of the ox, engraved here and there with the interlaced patterns that characterize the later Anglo-Saxon period. These are evidently speci- mens of engraving for even- tual reproduction on metal, p-^^ 2i._Engraver's Tr.al-p.ece of Bone, City of London (J) and there is another example, from London Wall, in the Guildhall Museum {Cat. pi. li, fig. 17). En- graved bones of the same character, but with more elaborate patterns, are "" Cal. No. 564 (with figs.); Gent. Mag. 1841, ii, 498, 265 (E. B. Price). "' Cat. of Engl. Coins, Anglo-Sax. ii, pi. vi, fig. 7 (for the reverse) and 8 (for the obverse), the l.itter coin being by the moneyer Eadulf (/;V). " Ibid, i, No. 403, pi. X, fig. 16. 162
