English: Speed's marginal illustration of an early 7th-century gold tremissis minted in Merovingian France or Friesland by an otherwise unknown moneyer or petty king named Audulf, misrepresented as a silver sceat or penny of the English king Eadulf. Speed's mistakes were long copied by other scholars without access to the coin itself. A 1606 note on the coin by Fabri de Peiresc makes it clear that Speed's garbled inscription and misrepresentation of the coin as silver were mistakes and not the result of a coin type distinct from the 3 other surviving examples of this issue.
Whether Frankish or Frisian, the coin is a late example of the tremissis originally intended to represent ⅓ solidus. The tremissis is also described as a triens &c. in Frankish contexts and a thrymsa &c. in Anglo-Saxon English contexts. As such, this coin type is now usually described as an "Audulfus Frisia Triens". Griegson notes this particular coin is AV 13 mm 1.34 g with a diademed bust facing right obverse and a cross potent on a triangular base and step reverse. The actual coin has an upper-case alpha (Α) under the cross's left arm and a lower-case omega (ω) under the cross's left arm, both connected upwards to create the appearance of a scale. Speed's engraving mistook these for a single vine, copied by subsequent printers and scholars until it was sometimes further mistaken for a snake. Speed's engraving turned the actual coin's 6-pointed star into a 5-pointed one; Walker and subsequent printings omitted it.
Obverse: AVDVLFI+VSFRISIN [AVDVLFVSFRISIA in De Peiresc & on the actual coin, Audulfus Frisia, generally understood as intending either "Audulf King in Frisia" or "Minted by Audulf the Frisian"]
Reverse: VICTVRIAADVLFO [VICTVRIA AVDVLFO in De Peiresc & on the actual coin, intending VICTORIA AVDVLFO, generally understood as either commemorating "Victory by Audulf" over the Franks, some other local enemy, or paganism or as a partially garbled mimicking of earlier tremisses and solidi, particularly the CHLOTARII VICTVRIA issues of Clothar II]
Speed's (erroneous) note stated "10 An Do. 664 ALdulfe, the eldest sonne of Ethelherd and Queene Hereswith, after the death of his vncle King Edelwald, obtained the Kingdome of the East-Angles, and therein raigned without any honour or honourable action by him performed: onely his name and time of his raigne, which was nineteene yeres, is left of him by Writers: and affordeth no further relation of vs here to be inserted, besides his Coine here set."
See
Griegson,
De Nederlandsche Bank, &
Vanbrabant.