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VII.—The Medieval Jewellery from the Fishpool, Nottinghamshire, Hoard

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 April 2011

J. Cherry
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Extract

Hoards of coins that include jewellery are uncommon in the middle ages. In England up to 1966 there were only three such hoards known. These are the twelfth-century hoard from Lark Hill, Worcester, which contained six rings; the hoard from Coventry of c. 1290–8 containing two silver ring brooches; and the Thame hoard deposited after 1457 and containing five rings. In 1966 the discovery of a hoard of gold coins and jewellery at Fishpool, Nottinghamshire, added a fourth hoard to this sequence.

Type
Research Article
Information
Archaeologia , Volume 104 , 1973 , pp. 307 - 321
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1973

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References

page 307 note 1 The Lark Hill, Worcester, hoard was discovered in 1854. The original discovery was published in Archaeologia, xxxvi (1855), 200 ffGoogle Scholar. The rings were published by Dalton, O. M., Catalogue of Finger Rings (London, 1912)Google Scholar, nos. 1025, 1740, 1741, 1743–5. The Coventry hoard, discovered in 1937, is published in Antiq. Journ. xvii (1937), 440Google Scholar and B.M.Q. xi (1936–7), 167. For the Thame hoard see Appendix III. The only continental hoard with jewellery known to me is the Liège hoard deposited before 1407 and discovered in 1921. This contained one gold and one silver ring (Crooy, F., ‘Deux écuelles et une bague en argent de xiv siècle’, Bulletin des Musées Royaux d' Art et d'Histoire, 1934, no. 3, p. 66Google Scholar, and Alice Bara, ‘Trois objets en argent de la trouvaille de Liège de 1921’, ibid., 1944, pp. 83–8).

page 307 note 2 The map reference for the find is SK 559549.

page 307 note 3 Archibald, Marion, ‘Fishpool, Blidworth (Notts.), 1966 Hoard: Interim Report’, Num. Chron. vii (1967), 133–46Google Scholar.

page 308 note 1 I am grateful to Miss M. Miller for drawing the rings and chains.

page 308 note 2 In Evans, Joan, English Posies and Posy Rings (Oxford, 1931)Google Scholar there are 147 French inscriptions and 35 English inscriptions in the black-letter section.

page 309 note 1 The ring in the V. & A. is M. 77. 1969. The other is O. M. Dalton, op. cit., no. 987.

page 309 note 2 John Donne, Anatomie of the World, The First Anniversary, lines 343–4.

page 310 note 1 O. M. Dalton, op. cit., p. xxxiii.

page 310 note 2 Deloche, M., La Bague en France (Paris, 1929)Google Scholar. Dervieu, M., ‘La Bague au moyen age’, Revue Archaeologique, xix (1924), 55Google Scholar.

page 310 note 3 I am most grateful to Mr. John Goodall for his help. The Wowen arms are not mentioned in the London Visitations, but they do appear in both Berry, W., Encyclopedia Heraldica (London, 1828–40)Google Scholar, vol. ii, and Robson, T., British Herald (Sunderland, 1830)Google Scholar, vol. ii.

page 311 note 1 For the cross see B.M.Q. xi (1936), 1.

page 311 note 2 Hartshorne, A., ‘Gold Chains and Pendants of the Later Middle Ages’, Arch. Journ. lxvi (1909), 77Google Scholar.

page 312 note 1 R.C. Hist. MSS. Seventh Report, p. 537.

page 312 note 2 Gardner, Arthur, Alabaster Tombs (Cambridge, 1940), p. 89Google Scholar. Cox, J. C., Notes on the Churches of Derbyshire (London, 1877), ii, 382Google Scholar. I wish to acknowledge my debt to the Society for Medieval Archaeology for a grant from the Colt Fund enabling me to study tombs with representations of jewellery.

page 313 note 1 Arthur Gardner, op. cit., p. 100. Chatwin, P., ‘Monumental Effigies in the County of Warwick’, Trans. Birm. Arch. Soc. xlvii (1921), 82Google Scholar. The exact date of Isabel's death is not stated. The tomb is illustrated in SirDugdale, W., Antiquities of Warwickshire (London, 1730), p. 1115Google Scholar.

page 313 note 2 A. 9462. No provenance.

page 313 note 3 Nichols, J., Royal Wills (London, 1780), p. 181Google Scholar. ‘Item un crois d'or pendant par un cheyne ove une ymage du crucifix et IIII perles entour, ove ma benoison, come chose du myen qe jay mieux amee.’

page 313 note 4 Rot. Parl. iv, 220.

page 314 note 1 For the portraits of Philip the Good see the Catalogue of the Exposition de la Toison d'or (Bruges, 1907)Google Scholar and Friedlander, M. J., Die altniederländische Malerei (1924), vol. ii, nos. 125–125gGoogle Scholar.

page 314 note 2 I am most grateful to Miss Marion Archibald for making the suggestion that blue and white might represent livery colours. Davies, A. C. Fox in his Heraldic Badges (London, 1907)Google Scholar assigns the colours of white and blue to the two Lancastrian kings, Henry IV and V, and also to the Yorkist William Neville, Lord Fauconberg, who died (probably at the siege of Alnwick) in 1463. None of the descriptions of jewellery in the inventories of Henry IV and V refer to the use of colours in such a way as to suggest that it was intended to indicate their livery colours, and it does not seem possible to prove that the enamelling of any particular piece of fifteenth-century jewellery is intended to indicate livery colours. It does not seem possible to suggest from this that the hoard is more likely to be Lancastrian than Yorkist.

page 314 note 3 There are two heart-shaped brooches with sans departier inscriptions. One inscribed was found in Warwickshire and was in the Nelson collection (Joan Evans, A History of Jewellery 1100–1870 (2nd edn., 1970), p. 59). The other is an early fifteenth-century gold brooch, inscribed in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The museum has also three gold ring brooches with similar inscriptions—one (2279–1855, from the Bernal collection) with the legend divided in four oval panels , and two others inscribed and . The British Museum has two ring brooches—one gold (AF 2698), inscribed , and one silver (56, 6–27, 147), inscribed exhibited by Mr. Whincopp at the Royal Archaeological Institute's exhibition at Norwich in 1847, later published in Arch. Journ. ix (1852), 116. The museum has also four rings inscribed in various spellings (O. M. Dalton, op. cit, nos. 725, 728, 736, and 978). A ring in Norwich Museum is inscribed (Norwich Museum Catalogue (1909), no. 997) and there is a heraldic ring in Birmingham Museum inscribed (Apollo, April 1968, p. 284). In the inventory of Henry V (Rot. Parl. iv, 217) there is the following item: l coler, de tissu vert, garniz d'or, l'escriptur ‘saunz departier’.

page 315 note 1 Smith, I. H. Clifford, Jewellery (London, 1908), p. 129Google Scholar and Steingraber, E., Antique Jewellery (London, 1957), p. 45Google Scholar, fig. 51.

page 315 note 2 Myers, A. R., ‘The Captivity of a Royal Witch’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, xxiv (1940), 263CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The inventories are published by Baildon, W. Paley, ‘Three Inventories’, Archaeologia lxi (1908), 166Google Scholar.

page 316 note 1 The brooches were acquired by Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks and were included in the Franks bequest (AF 2768, 2769, 2770). They were first published by H. Clifford Smith, op. cit., p. 143. There were once two similar brooches in the Figdor collection. One without any provenance is now in the Cloisters, (The Middle Ages, Treasures from the Cloisters (Los Angeles, 1970), p. 249Google Scholar). The present location of the other is unknown but it is recorded that it was found in Lublin, Poland.

page 317 note 1 Koster, Kurt, ‘Religiose Medaillen und Wallfahrts-Devotionalien der flämischen Buchmalerei des 15 und frühen 16. Jahrhunderts’, Buch und Welt: Festschrift für Gustav Hofmann zum 65 Geburstag dargebracht, ed. Striedl, H. and Wieder, J. (Wiesbaden 1965), pp. 459–504Google Scholar.

page 317 note 2 No list of manuscripts depicting jewellery has ever been compiled. Manuscripts with illustrations that I have noted include, apart from the two discussed, B.M. Add. MSS. 35314, fol. 72b, 73; B.M. Add. 18852, fol. 362A; B. Nat. Latin n 66; MS. Douce 8; MS. Douce 223; MS. Douce 256; Vienna MS. Nov. 2619; and the Grimani Breviary.

page 318 note 1 De Laborde, Les Dues de Bourgogne, vol. i, part 2, p. 227.

page 318 note 2 Myers, A. R., Household of Edward IV (Manchester, 1959), p. 4Google Scholar.

page 318 note 3 The Paston Letters, ed. Gairdner, J. (London, 1900), vol. ii, 1461–71Google Scholar, no. 585, p. 317.

page 318 note 4 Scofield, Cora L., Life and Reign of Edward IV (London, 1923), i, 375Google Scholar; Issues of the Exchequer, ed. London, F. Devon, 1837), p. 491Google Scholar.

page 318 note 5 C.P.R. 1429–36, pp 537–9, 541–88.

page 318 note 6 Herbert, W., History of the Twelve Great Livery Companies, ii (1836), 134Google Scholar.

page 318 note 7 Thrupp, Sylvia L., ‘Aliens in and around London in the fifteenth century’, Studies in London History presented to P. E. Jones, Hollaender, A. E. J. and Kellaway, C. W. eds. (London, 1969), p. 265Google Scholar.

page 318 note 8 Thrupp, Sylvia L., ‘A Survey of the Alien Population of England in 1440’, Speculum, 1957, p. 268Google Scholar.

page 318 note 9 Dugdale, op. cit., pp. 445–7.

page 319 note 1 ‘Gregory's Chronicle’ in Historical Collections of a Citizen of London (Camden Society), 1876, p. 226Google Scholar.

page 320 note 1 Antiq. J. xxi (1941), 197–202Google Scholar.

page 321 note 1 Archaeologia, xx (1824), 566–8Google Scholar.

page 321 note 2 Oman, C., Catalogue of Rings (London, 1930), p. 33Google Scholar.

page 321 note 3 Frolow, A., Les Reliquaires de la vraie croix (Paris, 1961, 1965)Google Scholar, nos. 751, 852(5).

page 321 note 4 Catalogue of Oxford College Plate (Oxford, 1928), 67Google Scholar. A gold ring in the British Museum (AF 1094) has on each shoulder a cube pierced on three sides with letters, forming the word AMOURS. Although the letters are not set in roundels, they are in the same style as the Thame ring, and the letters M and O are in particular very no. similar. The ring is described as French, fifteenth century.