Money, economy and society in Late Saxon England: The Lenborough Hoard and the monetary impact of Anglo-Danish rule
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Leicester
Department Name: Sch of Historical Studies
Abstract
Research context
The project centres on the use of money in late Anglo-Saxon England, and what the issue, use, and distribution of coins reveals about the broader economy in the century before the Norman Conquest. It will do this via analysis of two types of coin data contained in three datasets - the Portable Antiquities Scheme database [PAS], the Early Medieval Coin corpus [EMC], and a new hoard, discovered in 2014 close to the village of Lenborough, near Buckingham, which comprises 5248 coins minted during the reigns of Æthelred II ('The Unready', 978-1016) and Cnut (1016-35) preserved in almost pristine condition. The Lenborough Hoard as not yet been fully catalogued and remains unstudied apart from a short preliminary report. This project will deliver the catalogue for the Hoard and the seminal contextual analysis of it, and create opportunities for public dissemination of knowledge gained through a new exhibition and other outreach opportunities.
The Lenborough Hoard was bought for the nation in 2016 after a public fundraising campaign. Its long term home is at the Bucks County Museum in Aylesbury. It is a unique source of evidence to analyse the impact of regime change on the early English economy in the later tenth and eleventh centuries, comprising a statistically significant number of coins that span this period. The data from the hoard is qualitatively and quantitatively different from that derived from single finds of coins recorded in the PAS and the EMC databases, since single finds record every day losses, whereas a hoard represents a single deposit likely to have been made in times of social stress. Contextualising the Lenborough Hoard against the single finds data will facilitate a much more nuanced understanding of the supply and use of money in late Saxon England than possible hitherto. The project will facilitate a new exhibition at the Bucks County Museum, and provide scholars with detailed analysis of a major new body of evidence.
The project covers the 80 years following King Edgar's major reform of the coinage in c. 973, made possible by the influx of silver created by a trade surplus with Ottonian Germany. Edgar's reforms created a currency that was remarkably stable, even through the tumultuous reign of Æthelred II, when England was subject to repeated attack by Viking armies and increasingly punitive taxation to service the 'Danegeld' that was used to buy them off. In 1016 England experienced dramatic regime change, when the old West Saxon dynasty was deposed by the prince of Denmark, Cnut, who subsequently ruled as king in England as well as Denmark and Norway. By the time of Cnut's conquest, England had been subject to almost 40 years of warfare and Danegeld. The volume of silver payments recorded in the sources, and the quantity of coins of both Æthelred and Cnut excavated in Scandinavia, reveal the profound wealth of late Saxon England; it is this and the role of coin in that society which this project seeks to illuminate by investigating the impact of Anglo-Danish rule on the monetary economy of eleventh-century England.
The project centres on the use of money in late Anglo-Saxon England, and what the issue, use, and distribution of coins reveals about the broader economy in the century before the Norman Conquest. It will do this via analysis of two types of coin data contained in three datasets - the Portable Antiquities Scheme database [PAS], the Early Medieval Coin corpus [EMC], and a new hoard, discovered in 2014 close to the village of Lenborough, near Buckingham, which comprises 5248 coins minted during the reigns of Æthelred II ('The Unready', 978-1016) and Cnut (1016-35) preserved in almost pristine condition. The Lenborough Hoard as not yet been fully catalogued and remains unstudied apart from a short preliminary report. This project will deliver the catalogue for the Hoard and the seminal contextual analysis of it, and create opportunities for public dissemination of knowledge gained through a new exhibition and other outreach opportunities.
The Lenborough Hoard was bought for the nation in 2016 after a public fundraising campaign. Its long term home is at the Bucks County Museum in Aylesbury. It is a unique source of evidence to analyse the impact of regime change on the early English economy in the later tenth and eleventh centuries, comprising a statistically significant number of coins that span this period. The data from the hoard is qualitatively and quantitatively different from that derived from single finds of coins recorded in the PAS and the EMC databases, since single finds record every day losses, whereas a hoard represents a single deposit likely to have been made in times of social stress. Contextualising the Lenborough Hoard against the single finds data will facilitate a much more nuanced understanding of the supply and use of money in late Saxon England than possible hitherto. The project will facilitate a new exhibition at the Bucks County Museum, and provide scholars with detailed analysis of a major new body of evidence.
The project covers the 80 years following King Edgar's major reform of the coinage in c. 973, made possible by the influx of silver created by a trade surplus with Ottonian Germany. Edgar's reforms created a currency that was remarkably stable, even through the tumultuous reign of Æthelred II, when England was subject to repeated attack by Viking armies and increasingly punitive taxation to service the 'Danegeld' that was used to buy them off. In 1016 England experienced dramatic regime change, when the old West Saxon dynasty was deposed by the prince of Denmark, Cnut, who subsequently ruled as king in England as well as Denmark and Norway. By the time of Cnut's conquest, England had been subject to almost 40 years of warfare and Danegeld. The volume of silver payments recorded in the sources, and the quantity of coins of both Æthelred and Cnut excavated in Scandinavia, reveal the profound wealth of late Saxon England; it is this and the role of coin in that society which this project seeks to illuminate by investigating the impact of Anglo-Danish rule on the monetary economy of eleventh-century England.
