Towards a revision of the internal chronology of the coinages of Edward the Elder and Plegmund

Extract

A number of years ago it was observed by the present writer that the later issues of King Edward the Elder's two substantive types (Brooke 12 and 13) can be distinguished from the earlier by the fact that they are struck on relatively spread flans. The diameter of typical pieces with the Cuerdale provenance for example is 20–1 mm, while pieces which have very close affinities with the earliest coins of Athelstan have a mean diameter in the region of 22–3 mm. It was further noticed that the coinage of Plegmund, archbishop of Canterbury, exhibits a neat dichotomy between pennies which conform in style and module to late, but not the very latest, coins of Alfred the Great and pennies which patently are contemporary with the later, but not the earlier, coins of Edward the Elder. The hypothesis was further advanced, and seems now generally accepted, that the Canterbury mint was closed as a consequence of the two-pronged Viking attack on Kent in 892 and opened again at least a year or two before the death of Plegmund. It follows that the inception of the last phase of Edward's coinage falls likewise at least a couple of years before the archbishop's demise, an event which is uniformly dated in the numismatic literature to 914. Nor can numismatists altogether be blamed for their consistency in accepting without demur a date proposed without any indication of controversy by so respectable, and indeed magisterial, a work of reference as F. M. Powicke and E. B. Fryde, Handbook of British Chronology.