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Some Irish evidence for the date of the Crux coins of Æthelred II
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 September 2008
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In Anglo-Saxon Coins G. Van der Meer has set out in a convenient and readily accessible form the sequence of six sexennial issues (and minor transitional types) which I had worked out during the preceding decade for the coinage of Æthelred II. For the Crux issue (Brooke 3; BMC iii.a; Hild. C – cf. North 770; Seaby 667) the period of issue which I had proposed is from the autumn of 991 to the autumn of 997. I wish now to examine the bearing that some new evidence has on the dating of this issue, but before doing so I need to clarify a controversial feature of the identification of types that is the basis of my chronology for the reign. The six substantive issues which I had distinguished after studying a large number of hoards preserved intact in Sweden are First Hand, Second Hand, Crux, Long Cross, Helmet and Last Small Cross, but others, notably Mr C. E. Blunt, Mr J. D. Brand and, more seriously, Dr Bertil Petersson, have sought to establish that Second Hand is no more than a late variant of a single Hand issue. Each of them has his particular argument to be answered, but first of all there is the relative scarcity of Hand coins generally that has to be explained, for Hildebrand has described a total of only 483 First and Second Hand coins combined, including only 192 of the latter, as against 790 Crux and 940 Long Cross pieces. To my mind there is a quite simple historical reason. Hand coins according to my chronology are ascribed to the 980s: their relative paucity in Viking hoards is surely to be accounted for by the fact that really massive Danish attacks upon England did not begin until the 990s, while it was not until 991 that Danegeld as such began to be paid.
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References
page 145 note 1 Ed. [R. H.] M. Dolley (London, 1961), p. 186.
page 145 note 2 The following abbreviations are used: BMC = A Catalogue of the Coins in the British Museum. Anglo-Saxon Series (London, 1887–1893)Google Scholar; Brooke, = Brooke, G. C., English Coins, 3rd ed. (London, 1950)Google Scholar; Hild. = Hildebrand, B. E., Anglosachsiska Mynt i Svenska Kongliga Myntkabinettet funna i Sveriges Jord, 2nd ed. (Stockholm, 1881)Google Scholar; North = North, J. J., English Hammered Coinage 1 (London, 1963)Google Scholar; SCBI = Sylloge of Coins of the Brit. Isles (London, 1958); SCMB = Seaby's Coin and Medal Bull.; Seaby = Seaby, P., Seaby's Standard Catalogue: British Coins - England and the United Kingdom, 11th ed. (London, 1972)Google Scholar; SHM Inv. = manuscript accession registers (with supporting documentation) in the Katalog room of the (Statens) Historiska Museum, Stockholm; SNC = Spink's Numismatic Circular; Thompson = Thompson, J. D. A., Inventory of British Coin Hoards A.D. 600–1500 (London, 1956).Google Scholar
page 145 note 3 NC 6th ser. 19 (1959), Proceedings, p. iv.
page 145 note 4 SNC 75 (1967), 63–5 and 94–5.
page 145 note 5 Petersson, H. B. A., Anglo-Saxon Currency (Lund, 1969)Google Scholar, passim.
page 145 note 6 Hild., pp. 169–71.
page 146 note 1 ASC, s.a.
page 146 note 2 BNJ 35 (1966), 37Google Scholar; Mossop, H. R., The Lincoln Mint (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1971), pp. 11–19.Google Scholar
page 146 note 3 Malmer, B., Nordiska Mynt Före År 1000 (Bonn and Lund, 1966), pp. 238–9.Google Scholar
page 146 note 4 NC 7th ser. 6 (1966), Proceedings, pp. viii-xiv.
page 146 note 5 BNJ 35 (1966), 34–7Google Scholar, and works there cited.
page 146 note 6 BNJ 39 (1970), 199–200.Google Scholar
page 147 note 1 ‘If their return to Scandinavia occasioned the influx of these coins, the Long Cross issue would have begun in 994, against Dolley's date of 997 and Petersson's of 996’ (ibid. p. 200). Note, though, that consideration is not given to the fact that the earliest coins of Olaf Tryggvason and of Olof Skötkonung are of Crux and not Long Cross type; see below, p. 153.
page 147 note 2 [R.H.] Dolley, M., The Hiberno-Norse Coins in the British Museum, SCBI (1966)Google Scholar. In preparation is an SCBI fascicule embracing the 440 Hiberno-Norse coins in the Royal Cain Cabinet at Stockholm – more than 370 of them from the two decades c. 1000–c. 1020 where the representation in the British Museum trays amounts to no more than forty-one.
page 147 note 3 For a corpus of the specimens in public collections see my forthcoming contribution to the Festschrift in honour of Dr Olof von Feilitzen.
page 147 note 4 Dolley, , Hiberno-Norse Coins, p. 55.Google Scholar
page 147 note 5 ibid. p. 57.
page 147 note 6 Lindsay, J., A View of the Coinage of Scotland (Cork, 1845), pp. 1–3.Google Scholar
page 147 note 7 Dolley, , Hiberno-Norse Coins, p. 58.Google Scholar
page 147 note 8 The Swedish are the 1807 Myrungs hoard from Gotland (SHM Inv. 394) and the 1924 Igelösa hoard from Skaåne (SHM Inv. 17532), and the Icelandic is the 1930 hoard from Gaulverjabaer(Nordisk Numismatisk Årsskrift 1948, 52, no. 90). In all three finds the latest English coins present are of Long Cross type and occur in substantial numbers.
page 147 note 9 The finds are the 1913 hoard from Sandtorp in Central Sweden (SHM Inv. 14935) believed to have been concealed c. 1030, and the 1942 hoard from Halsarve on Gotland for which an early-twelfth-century date is not impossible (SHM Inv. 23040).
page 148 note 1 In a forthcoming paper in the Jnl of the R. Soc. of Antiquaries of Ireland.
page 148 note 2 Curtis, E., A. History of Ireland, 6th ed. (London, 1950), p. 27Google Scholar. In his History of Medieval Ireland, 2nd ed. (London, 1938), p. 7Google Scholar, 1000 is given as the date of Sihtric's accession, but the pendulum had swung too far in the other direction.
page 149 note 1 SCMB 1971, 90–1.
page 149 note 2 The present location of a sixth English striking (R. C. Lockett coin sale, Glendining, 6–9 June 1955, lot 686c) is unknown to me.
page 149 note 3 SCMB 1972, 176–8.Google Scholar
page 150 note 1 SNC 69 (1961), 240–1.Google Scholar One apparently unique Watchet coin (BMC Æthelred 338) does have the fuller rendering of the ethnic as ANGLORX but weighs no more than 24.7 grains; Hild. Ethelred 3882–4 weigh 21.6, 23.3 and 27.9 grains respectively and have no fuller form of the ethnic than ANGLO followed by a mark of contraction - a die also used in the case of SCBI Copenhagen 11, no. 1274 where the weight is 26.8 grains; two coins in the List hoard (Kersten, J. and La Baume, P., Vorgeschichte der nordfriesiscben Inseln (Neumünster, 1958)Google Scholar, nos. 583–4) bear an obverse legend which ends ANGLO and weigh no more than 20.3 and 22.1 grains respectively; an eighth coin in the possession of Messrs A. H. Baldwin & Sons Ltd also reads ANGLO and weighs only 21.6 grains.
page 150 note 2 The English hoard-evidence for this period suggests strongly that demonetization of an old issue was achieved very early in the currency of its successor, and it is reasonable to conclude that the bulk of the coins of a particular type would have been struck within a matter of months after its introduction.
page 151 note 1 The translation is that of Professor Whitelock, (The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, trans. Whitelock, D. with Douglas, D. C. and Tucker, S. I. (London, 1961))Google Scholar except that I have substituted ‘Viking’ for ‘Danish’– se here does not have to be specified in the original.
page 151 note 2 Dolley, , Hiberno-Norse Coins, pl. i, 17Google Scholar is a case in point, but there are other coins in the National Museum of Ireland where the Small Crux prototype is just as obvious.
page 151 note 3 E.g. Hild. Ethelred 546.
page 151 note 4 See below, p. 152, n. 1.
page 151 note 5 See above, p. 146, n. 3.
page 152 note 1 SHM Inv. 17532 – two of the coins are in Stockholm and seven in the University Museum atLund: Kersten, and Baume, La, Vorgeschicbte, pp. 473–4Google Scholar. Both hoards embrace all significant varieties of the Dublin penny of Long Cross type.
page 152 note 2 Nordisk Numismatisk Unions Medlemsblad 1954, 152–6.
page 152 note 3 BNJ 35 (1966), 34–7.Google Scholar
page 152 note 4 ASC, s.a.
page 153 note 1 E.g. the 1914 Pemberton's Parlour hoard from Chester (Thompson 85, but the estimate of concealment c. 985 is demonstrably too late: NC 4th ser. 20 (1920), 141–65Google Scholar) and the neglected but critical 1835 hoard from Vaalse in Denmark (SCBI Copenhagen 1, 27; Æthelred coins listed ibid. 11, xiv), but it is only with the publication of the Swedish material that the picture will begin to emerge in all its clarity.
page 153 note 2 E.g. the 1886 Isleworth hoard (Thompson 203, but the estimate of concealment c. 980 is demonstrably too early: NC 3rd ser. 6 (1886), 161–3) and the 1942 Lymose hoard from Denmark (SCBI Copenhagen 1, 29; Æthelred coins listed ibid. 11, xii).
page 153 note 3 Pp. 229–40 of B. Malmer, ‘A Contribution to the Numismatic History of Norway during the Eleventh Century’, Commentationes de Nummis Saeculorum IX–XI in Suecia Kepertis, ed. N. L. Rasmusson and L. O. Lagerqvist, 1 (Stockholm, 1961) are unquestionably the best and fullest treatment of the Norwegian and Danish coins in question.
page 153 note 4 Malmer, B., Olof Skötkonungs Mynt ocb Andra Ethelred-Imitationer (Stockholm, 1965)Google Scholar neatly if legitimately side-steps the problem of an absolute chronology, but ‘ca 995–1022’ are the dates for Olof's reign which appear in Lagerqvist, L. O., Svenska Mynt under Vikingatid och Medeltid (Stockholm, 1970Google Scholar) and may be taken as reflecting the best and most recent Swedish historical thinking.
page 154 note 1 In this connection I am particularly grateful to my old friend Förste antikvarie Lars O. Lagerqvist for going through with me in 1972 the relevant sections of his 1961 licentiatavhandling entitled ‘Studier i Äldre Nordisk Mynthistoria’ – a piece of research which it is hoped may still appear in printed form.