A History of Medieval Coinage in England (original) (raw)
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In medieval Britain coins found use beyond the monetary exchange purpose for which they were originally produced. Through the study of surviving coin finds and supporting documentary and archaeological evidence, this paper introduces the principal non-currency methods to which coins were put and explores a number of questions: why were coins used as the adaptive edium and for what purpose? What can we deduce from the type, denomination and condition of the adapted coins? What do the various practices outlined below tell us about the relationships between people and money, display and piety, and religion and ritual?
Mints and money in Norman England
In 1066 England had a highly developed coinage, which was left almost untouched by the Norman Conquest, in the short term at least. The system documented by Domesday Book in 1086 is essentially that of Edward the Confessor in 1066, with large numbers of moneyers in dozens of urban centres minting silver pennies and making profits for the king and local magnates, lay and ecclesiastical. The moneyers paid fees to obtain their coin dies in London, and the designs on the dies were regularly changed to generate more income from the issue of coins to people who needed money of the latest type. This system survived in its essentials until Henry II's two major reforms of the English coinage in 1158 and 1180, but the apparent continuity between 1066 and 1158 masks a series of innovations and periods of instability.
Review of Naismith et al., Early Medieval Monetary History
Medieval Review, 2015
The essays in this volume are dedicated to Mark Blackburn and seek to celebrate his scholarly legacy. As such, the contributions, while focused on medieval coinage and centered on the British Isles, are as much about the impact numismatics makes on wider issues in history and archaeology as well as the diverse geographies in which Blackburn researched. The editors have divided the collection into four main parts, corresponding to the honoree's primary areas of research. Parts 1-3 offer synthetic studies, integrating monetary history into broader debates about politics, economics, art, culture and daily life. Part 4, by contrast, concentrates on particular coin finds and demonstrates a variety of interpretive methods for this evidence.