1 Penny - Richard I Short Cross type, class 4b

Richard I spent fewer than six months of his ten-year reign on English soil, yet the crown's minting apparatus ground on regardless. Short Cross pennies of this class were struck under moneyers operating at up to a dozen provincial mints simultaneously, the coins funding crusade expenses, Richard's enormous ransom of 150,000 marks demanded by Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI in 1194, and chronic warfare in France — all without the king ever supervising a single striking.

Class 4b is distinguished from adjacent classes primarily by subtle letterform changes, a classification system largely systematized by Jeffrey North in the twentieth century rather than by any deliberate royal design decision at the time.