the Old, Sidroc the Younger, Osbern, Fræna and Harold. The West Saxons followed the Viking flight until nightfall, cutting them down. The historian Barbara Yorke, who sees Asser's biography as intended to portray Alfred as an ideal king, comments that "Asser is particularly careful to give much credit to Alfred". However, the victory was short-lived. Two weeks later, Æthelred and Alfred were defeated at the royal estate of Basing in the Battle of Basing. There was then a lull of two months until the West Saxons and the Vikings met at an unknown location called Meretun. In the battle on 22 March the Vikings again divided into two divisions and the West Saxons had the advantage for much of the day, putting both divisions to flight, but the Vikings regrouped and finally held control of the battlefield. The West Saxons lost many important men, including Heahmund, the Bishop of Sherborne. Coinage In the late eighth and ninth centuries the only denomination of coin produced in southern England was the silver penny. As of 2007, 152 coins of Æthelred struck by 32 different moneyers have been recorded. His reign is described by the numismatists Adrian Lyons and William Mackay as "a critical point in the development of the English coinage". His first Four Line issue was stylistically similar to the Floriate Cross penny of his predecessor, Æthelberht, but he soon abandoned this and adopted the design of his Mercian brother-in-law, Burgred, resulting in a common coinage design across southern England for the first time. The historian and numismatist Rory Naismith comments that Æthelred took the important step of adopting a new coin-type based not on local tradition, but on the Lunettes-type current in contemporary Mercia. The year 865 thus saw not only the arrival of the Viking great army that would dismantle most of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, but also the beginning of the end for separate coinages in separate kingdoms. Lyons and Mackay see the change as even more crucial: The developments of the late 860s can thus be viewed as an essential precursor that eventually led to the unified reform coinage of Edgar. This convergence of the coinage is also tangible evidence for a growing collaboration between Mercia and Wessex which foreshadowed the eventual creation of a unified England. The single coinage design created a form of monetary union in southern England, reinforcing the mingling of economic interests between the