Henry II reformed the English coinage twice, in 1158 and 1180, reorganising the mints and ordering a comprehensive replacement of the silver coins in circulation on both occasions. By the end of Henry II's reign in 1189, the number of mints in England had been severely reduced. Centralised mints replaced the dispersed small workshops of individual moneyers, which had been a normal feature of the English urban landscape since the late Anglo-Saxon period. In 1180, the moneyers lost their customary role in the administration of the profits of the coinage, and the mints now had separate exchanges, where a new kind of official paid by the king collected the profits. Henry II's second reform of the coinage, in 1180, was the prelude to an enormous growth in the size of the English currency, which began in the last years of the reign.

The principal source of documentary evidence for the English coinage in the reign of Henry II is the Exchequer's pipe rolls, which can be supplemented with Richard fitz Nigel's description of the work of the Exchequer in the Dialogus de Scaccario and information from chronicles. In 1951, Derek Allen's British Museum Catalogue (BMC) of Henry II's Cross-and-Crosslets or ‘Tealby’ coinage (see Figure 2 on p. 261), which was issued between 1158 and 1180, used the pipe rolls and other sources to construct a comprehensive analysis of the administration of the mints.