Styca - Aethelred II 1st reign

Aethelred II's first reign ended when he was driven out by a nobleman named Redwulf, who seized the Northumbrian throne in 844 and issued his own stycas before being killed by Viking raiders the same year. The styca series as a whole had been debasing steadily throughout the ninth century — earlier issues contain measurable silver, but by Aethelred's time the alloy had collapsed almost entirely to copper and lead, a slide that mirrors Northumbria's shrinking political coherence in the face of Scandinavian pressure.