There’s history on the other side of the coin

WHAT can a coin tell us? Quite a lot, actually, says Andrew Woods. Take the Oxford pound of Charles I, for example. It is enormous: an immense disc of solid silver that weighs heavy in the hand.

Back in 1642, when it was struck (in, you guessed it, Oxford) it would have been worth more than most people earned in a year, says Andrew, the new Curator of Numismatics (ie coins, medals and tokens) at the York Museums Trust.

But the sheer weight, heft and presence of this magnificent coin doesn’t symbolise the power of the king; quite the opposite.

It was minted at a time when Charles had been driven out of London by the Parliamentary forces. He set up a new mint, first in Wales and then Oxford. Pound coins would normally have been struck in gold, but Charles, effectively on the run and exiled from the capital, had more or less run out. So he had to resort to using silver instead; hence the impressive size and weight of the coin.

“I’m sure he’d have loved to have struck coins like this in gold – but he simply didn’t have enough,” Andrew says.

This coin was humiliating for Charles in another way, too. Coins traditionally had the king’s head stamped on one side. But Parliament, in control of the capital and the national mint in the Tower of London, were still striking coins with the king’s head on.

“They were saying they weren’t against kings as such, just against Charles,” Andrew says.

To differentiate his coins from the Parliamentary ones, therefore, Charles had to come up with a different design. Instead of his own head, his coins bore the image of a king on horseback. That image is almost worn away now on the enormous Oxford pound; but the outline of a rearing horse is still visible when you tilt the coin to the light and look carefully.

York Museums Trust has more than 40,000 items in its numismatics collection, the vast majority of them coins.

Andrew, who has been in post for less than four months after moving from the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, is only just getting to know some of them.

But already he has his favourites.

They include the Ryther hoard – a collection of more than 800 coins that were buried in an earthenware pot at Ryther near Selby in about 1487 AD.

That was towards the end of the Wars of the Roses, the bitter “cousins’ war” between the houses of York and Lancaster that tore England apart in the 1400s.

In 1487 Henry VII, the first Tudor king, had just come to the throne, after defeating York’s Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth.

Much of the north of England, however, still favoured the House of York. Henry set out to pacify the region –which might well have been when the hoard was buried.

“At times of strife, you found lots of hoards going into the ground,” Andrew says. In the days before banks, it was the best way to protect your wealth.

Most of the Ryther coins are sterling silver pennies, although there are a few groats, too, worth 4d. Some of the coins were already more than 100 years old when they were buried, and many are worn almost smooth from being passed from hand to hand for generations. It is one of the things he loves about coins, Andrew says. “They are very tactile. They were made to be handled, to be in the palm of the hand.”

One of the finer items in the Museums Trust’s numismatics collection is a hoard of gold staters that date back to the late Iron Age, about the time the Romans invaded Britain in 43 AD.

They were found in the East Riding and belonged to a king or tribal leader of the Corieltavi tribe of Britons. Each gleaming gold coin was stamped with intricate designs, often featuring a stylised horse, plus stars, wheels and rectangles.

The designs were ultimately based on designs for coins struck by Alexander the Great more than three centuries earlier – and had been copied and copied time and again as the use of coins spread westwards to Britain, so that the original Alexandrian design was hardly recognisable.

There were almost 100 of these coins in the hoard – and each one would have been worth a huge amount at the time. Again, they may well have been buried at a time of strife – possibly when the Romans invaded.

“They might have been buried just because of the Romans coming – or they may have been an offering to the Gods because of the Romans,” Andrew says.

There are countless coins from the Roman period in the trust’s collection, including a gold solidus from the reign of the Emperor Honorius in about 400AD. It’s a beautiful coin. On one side is a portrait of the emperor himself, with his Roman armour, hair and large nose all clearly visible 1,600 years later.

On the back is an image of the emperor treading on the back of a slave – an image of brutality and power at odds with Honorius’ position. During his reign, the Western Roman Empire reached a point of near collapse following successive ‘barbarian’ invasions – and in fact Rome itself was sacked by Goths.

Honorius it was who famously abandoned Briton. The legions were pulled out to help defend Rome and, in 410 AD, Honorius issued a document telling the people of Britain they’d have to defend themselves against Saxon invaders. Effectively, Andrew says, he was saying: “You’re on your own.”

There are plenty of Viking coins in the collection, too – including the Vale of York hoard found by metal detectorists in 2007. Many Viking coins are stamped with both pagan symbols (such as battle standards) and Christian symbols, such as crosses. It was a sign of how adaptable the Vikings were, Andrew says. “They came here and adapted to society, not just took it over.”

They did a fair bit of taking over too, though.

One of my personal favourites among the coins Andrew produces is a drab little coin from the kingdom of Northumbria. It dates from the 9th century AD, just before the Vikings conquered York, one of Northumbria’s leading cities. It’s a styca or copper penny – and it was almost unique to Northumbria.

Elsewhere, more valuable silver coins were in use. Northumbria was perhaps the first kingdom in Saxon England – and perhaps one of the first anywhere in Europe – to introduce ‘small change’.

Thousands of these little coins have been found in York – 4,000 alone in a hoard discovered beneath the modern-day art gallery, and more found scattered as single finds across the city.

And what they reveal is that, perhaps for the first time, ordinary people were spending and exchanging cash. These drab little coins are a sign of how democratised 9th century Northumbria was, Andrew says. Money had tricked down into the hands of the masses. “There were a lot of people buying and selling things, lots of trade going on.”

Then the Vikings came and things changed. They were only interested in silver and gold, not Northumbria’s copper ‘small change’.

But looking at that drab little coin, it is impossible not to mourn for the enlightened kingdom of traders and shoppers that flourished here 1,200 years ago before the Vikings arrived…

Collection runs to 40,000 items

THERE are more than 40,000 items in the York Museums Trust’s numismatics collection – including coins, medals and tokens.

The collection was started in the 1820s, and has been accumulated gradually through donations and the acquisition of local finds. Much of the collection focuses on coins found in York and Yorkshire. Older items are kept at the Yorkshire Museum; those from the Civil War and later mainly at the Castle Museum.

There are far too many items for them all to be displayed all the time but Andrew, who joined the trust in April, is keen to make more of the collection.

That may in due course include ‘hands on’ events where visitors are invited to handle coins for themselves. “That’s what they were designed for, to be handled,” he says.

“Watch this space!”