ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS
venerated by the early Christian Church, and this may add significance to the fact that his coins have been found in England mounted as pendants.'
About forty years ago a necklace now in the British Museum was found in an Anglo-Saxon grave at Sarre in Kent, consisting of coloured glass beads and five gold pendants, four of which were coins. By a happy coincidence three of this number bear the image and superscription of the eastern emperors already mentioned, Mauricius and Heraclius while the fourth is a coin of the Prankish king Chlotaire II. (613-628) The Sarre specimens which are simply looped, are excelled by the Norfolk finds with their garnet cell-work. Though a cruciform pendant almost identical with that from Wilton but without the central coin, has been found so near as Ixworth in Suffolk,^ nothing of quite the same pattern has occurred among the rich discoveries of Kent, but it is yet permissible to assume a close connection between all these specimens as regards their use, their origin and workmanship.
In his description of the find at Sarre,' Roach Smith remarks that the gold coins of the eastern empire called solidi had been introduced about the year 325, though most of the pieces that found their way to the north-west of Europe belong to the fifth century and specially to its second half.* This was the period of the Gothic and Hunnish ascendency, and it has been suggested that the minted gold may have passed into Teutonic hands as tribute. Whatever the reason, it is certain that early in the seventh century the Merovingian kings began to coin gold, and took as their model the Byzantine solidus. It may well be that the Norfolk pieces were struck by Chlotaire himself, who was a contemporary of Heraclius; and they may further be said with some confidence to have been mounted almost as they are to-day about the middle of the seventh century. Some light is hereby thrown on the date of two other coin-pendants in the national collection. They enclose gold coins of Valens (364-378)," and Valentinian II. (375-392);' and though closely resembling the Bacton specimen in form, are ornamented in the Kentish style with a geometrical design of garnets, and probably date from the seventh century. Nor is the place of manufacture less easy to fix within certain limits. Authorities agree that the Kentish jewellery surpassed all other efforts of Teutonic goldsmiths here or on the continent, and four of the five jewels mentioned bear all the characteristic marks of a Kentish origin. Granted that the barrel-shaped loop of coiled wire has also been found on garnet pendants in Northamptonshire, in Derbyshire and Wiltshire,' the noble series from the King's Field, Faversham, convinces us that this rich and dainty cell-work with its gorgeous play of colour, had its home in Kent from which it seldom spread abroad. But a comparison of the two Norfolk pendants shows that while the method is
' Joumal of Bfitish A rchieob^cal Association, vol. viii. p. 140. 2 Figured and described in Roach Smith's Collectanea Anltqua, vol. iv. pi. zzxviii. fig. I. 3 Archaohgla Cantiana, vol. iii. p. 38, pi. ii.
- Sophus MUller, Nordlsche AltertUmer, vol. ii. p. 205.
- Locality unknown ; figured in Archaologia, vol. xxxii. pi. 7, fig. 2.
^ Found in Staffordshire. ' Pagan Saxondom, pi. i. fig 3 and pi. xl. fig. 4- 343
