W. C a r e w H a z l i t t Coinage of the European Continent

Descriptive Outline of the Coinages of Europe 391
other families, down to 1708. The house of Sombreffe
must have been one of considerable importance and weight,
and during their tenure of the fief a varied and extensive
coinage, partly copied from other Flemish types, was struck
at Reckheim, Bortheim, and other mints. These coins are
not easily appropriated, as there were three consecutive
lords of the name of William : on one of them we find the
addition, Dns, de Kerphen, seeming to shew that their
sovereignty extended to Kerpen in Julich or Juliers. The
later representatives, including Ernest van Lynden, created
a Count of the Empire in 1620, adopted as their numismatic
models the current types of Liege, Brabant, Holland,
France, even Spain. There was no originality ; but, politically
speaking, the lordship was during more than two
centuries a prominent feature in the life of the Southern
Netherlands.
Counts
of Flanders
The feudal and virtually sovereign county of Flanders,
which at different epochs united with it other titular distinctions,
as Ternois, Alost, Hainault, and Boulogne, and in
the person of one of the dynasty founded the Latin Empire
of the East, comprehended the two divisions of modern
Belgium so named, a portion of the Dutch province of
Zeeland, and the actual French departments of Nord and
Pas de Calais. The independent Counts, of whom the first,
Beaudouin or Baldwin I., 862-79, was Grand Forester of
Flanders, and son-in-law of Charles le Chauve, date from the
ninth century, but Arnould II. (965-88) appears to be the
earliest of whom we have coins. Saint-Omer, Ghent, and
Bruges were among the original mints, and there is a long
series of deniers and gros of various types down to the
commencement of the fourteenth century, when Louis II. of
Creq:y (1322-46) emulated his neighbours and countrymen
by the introduction of gold types, which, with a general
development of the coinage, were multiplied by his son and
successor, Louis of Maele (1346-84), the last count. Marguerite,
daughter and heiress of Louis III., carried the