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

Introduction 1
9
VII
The Low Countries, numismatically considered, fall at
different periods under four successive systems
of divisional
or other treatment: namely, I, the ancient feudal States;
2, the United Provinces ; 3, the Kingdom of Holland
; 4,
the Kingdom of the Netherlands. For our immediate object
the first period is immeasurably the most important, and the
two monarchical eras the least so. Such space as it is in
our power to allot will therefore be chiefly occupied by a
sketch, sufficient, it is to be hoped, to guide our readers, of
the long and extensive series of virtually autonomous coinage
with and without the imperial titles, struck between the
eighth and sixteenth centuries by the Counts and Dukes
of Gueldres ;
the Counts of Holland and West Friesland ;
the
Bishops of Utrecht, Daventer, and Lie"ge ;
the Counts of
Flanders, Hainault, and Namur ;
the Dukes of Luxemburgh,
and a host of subsidiary personages no less than ;
by such
towns as Nimmhegen, Daventer, Campen, Zwolle, Maestricht,
Ghent, Antwerp, Tournay, and Bois-le-Duc.
The consolidation of the Netherlands into provinces,
concurrently with the cruel and protracted struggle against
foreign invaders, introduced a new monetary epoch, which
possesses its own strong and often painful interest, and
which in reality was brought to a close only in the present
century on the establishment of the existing forms of government
in Holland and Belgium respectively.
Certain general features of similarity in fabric, linear
disposition, and the treatment of the Cross as an auxiliary
between some of the Carlovingian coins of bath types, the
coeval Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman pennies, and the
silver money published by the eleventh century rulers of
Denmark and Norway, are apt' to awaken curiosity and
speculation. The subject
is a very obscure and complicated
one ;
and the differences of judgment among the best and
latest authorities upon it may warrant us in declining to
enter into the argument in more than a passing way.