1 Penny - Henry II Short Cross type, class 1c

The Short Cross coinage was introduced in 1180 as a deliberate reform, replacing the preceding Cross-and-Crosslets ("Tealby") type that had become notorious for its irregular striking and crude finish. Henry II's treasury pushed the reform partly to restore confidence in the silver penny after decades of complaints from merchants about underweight and clipped coins — the cross on the reverse was extended to the rim precisely to make clipping detectable. Class 1c sits early in the sequence, distinguished by subtle differences in lettering and portrait execution that occupied generations of scholars before North and others established a workable classification framework.