For an august and important institution of the realm, whose activities concern every citizen so constantly and continuously, is it not surprising how little every citizen knows of the London Mint in detail? In this 1953 book its story up until the 1950s is told with unimpeachable authority by Sir John Craig, former Deputy Master and Comptroller of the Royal Mint and Engraver of the King's Seals. Any reader may follow the chronology of the Mint, from the many crude workshops of the early days to the central, nationally recognised organisation with statutory safeguards that it has become. Here they may read of those who influenced the growth and policy of the Mint, watch the development of monetary theory, as well as the changes in technical processes of coin making, and the gradual evolution of statutory control. The whole work is illustrated from the archives of the Mint.

List of illustrations
Table of sovereigns
Introduction
1. Early mints
2. Concentration in London
3. Shaping the tower mint
4. The return of gold
5. End of the Middle Ages
6. Renaissance and debasement
7. Elizabeth I
8. Court and commonwealth
9. Mechanization of the mint
10. Guineas and coppers
11. The Great Silver Recoinage
12. Isaac Newton
13. The age of deputies
14. Later eighteenth-century coinage
15. Under the committee on coin
16. William Wellesley Pole
17. Cabinet masters
18. Two masters of science
19. Growth of the modern mint
20. Modern British coinage
21. Ireland
22. Other external coinages
23. Trial of the Pyx
The appendices
Bibliography
Subject index
Index of the persons, with their mint connections.

Subject Areas: British & Irish history [HBJD1]