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William the Conqueror William the Conqueror Pax Penny1083
1083
$2,800
£2,124.93
€2,448.37
CA$3,955.95
A$4,238.74
CHF 2,273.79
MX$50,208.48
NOK 28,682.56
SEK 26,240.11
DKK 18,289.64
About the Item
William the Conqueror Pax Penny
English pennies struck in the name of “King William” are the PAXS pennies: these display the letters P A X S (“Peace”) at the intersections of the cross on the reverse
William the Conqueror ended his last military campaign on English soil in 1081. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle does not indicate that anything of note happened over the next three years. It seems reasonable to think that in 1083 – the year traditionally assigned as the start of the PAXS coinage – William the Conqueror would have felt absolutely secure in his possession of the English throne and that England was finally at peace: now was the time to launch a coinage that proclaims peace. the pax penny was produced 1083-1086.
Silver
Condition is very good - a crisp strike
When William the Conqueror rode into England in 1066, he didn’t just bring knights and taxes. He brought a new ruling language. Overnight, the people at the top of society stopped speaking like the people at the bottom.
In royal courts, great halls, and law courts, the new Norman elite used French (technically Anglo-Norman). Charters, lawsuits, royal commands—if it mattered to power, it was written and spoken in French or Latin. The king was roi, the court was cour, and the law was loi.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of the population—Anglo-Saxon farmers, craftsmen, and villagers—kept speaking Old English. It was a West Germanic language, closer to modern German and Dutch than to what we speak today. Everyday life still ran on words like hus (house), cū (cow), swīn (pig), hlāf (loaf).
For almost 300 years, these two worlds coexisted uneasily. A peasant might never utter a word of French, yet French still governed his taxes, his trials, and his king. Slowly, though, the languages began to bleed into each other. Children growing up near towns and courts heard both tongues; scribes started to mix spellings; priests translated sermons for mixed audiences.
Out of this long contact came a linguistic double vision we still live with. The people who raised animals used their old Germanic words: cow, pig, sheep. The nobles who ate the prepared meat used the French ones: beef (from boeuf), pork (from porc), mutton (from mouton). We govern with French and Latin—justice, parliament, nation, crown—but we feel with English: love, hate, home, hearth.
By the 14th century, the two streams had merged into Middle English, the language of Chaucer. It was neither pure French nor pure Old English, but a layered, flexible mix that could talk about kings and cabbages with equal ease.
That is the strange legacy of the Norman Conquest: a country split by language that, over time, forged one of the richest vocabularies on Earth—precisely because it once could not agree on how to speak.
- Creator:William the Conqueror (1028 - 1087, English)
- Creation Year:1083
- Dimensions:Height: 0.78 in (1.99 cm)Width: 0.78 in (1.99 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement Style:
- Period:
- Framing:Framing Options Available
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:New York, NY
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU1977217050222
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