The Collaborative International Dictionary
Mancus \Man"cus\, n. [AS.] An old Anglo Saxon coin both of gold and silver, and of variously estimated values. The silver mancus was equal to about one shilling of modern English money.
Wiktionary
n. 1 A gold coin used in Medieval Europe 2 An equivalent unit of monetary account
Wikipedia
Mancus (sometimes spelt mancosus or similar) was a term used in early medieval Europe to denote either a gold coin, a weight of gold of 4.25g (equivalent to the Islamic dinar, and thus lighter than the Byzantine solidus), or a unit of account of thirty silver pence. This made it worth about a month's wages for a skilled worker, such as a craftsman or a soldier. Distinguishing between these uses can be extremely difficult: the will of the Anglo-Saxon king Eadred, who died in 955, illustrates the problem well with its request that "two thousand mancuses of gold be taken and minted into mancuses" (nime man twentig hund mancusa goldes and gemynetige to mancusan).
Usage examples of "mancus".
I know when a wench spends a mancus of gold on sugar and nigh poisons a dozen poor orphans jist to make a present for a man.
The mancus was equated with thirty pence, probably from the time of its introduction.
Northumbrian had offered her fifteen mancuses for all that spoiled perfection.
I will even give you the full twelve mancuses, though you should only have paid eight.
I bought you at Hamwic for twelve mancuses, and I kept you here in the South for my own ends, so you could be useful to me.
But all the time, like it or not, from the first time I touched you, from the moment I paid twelve grubby mancuses, I was lost.
She could do without his kind of business, the coins he had handed her being far less than the fifty mancuses she would have to give Rain now.
Torolf had told him days ago that Norstead was his for the taking as long as he paid Hilda for her lifetime ten mancuses of gold each year, or sent to The Sanctuary its equivalent in game, oats, produce, and trade goods for a period of no less than twenty years.
In Etruria they also invoked a certain Mancus who must have been another Dis Pater.
Edmund's, since, besides a hundred mancuses of gold paid down as the soul-ransom, the mother of Athelstane had announced her intention of endowing that foundation with the better part of the lands of the deceased, in order to maintain perpetual prayers for his soul and that of her departed husband.