My main area of historical interest is the medieval period, and my particular passion is coins. Volunteering with the PAS has given me the chance to examine and record some lovely medieval coins which have recently been discovered, and can now help add to our knowledge of the period.
The database has also been a key source of information for my PhD research. My research is looking at the English coins of William the Conqueror (William I), and his son and successor William Rufus (William II). I’m investigating what the surviving pennies can reveal about English society in the period just after the Norman Conquest, and how museums can use their coin collections to present the period to the public. The PAS database has been vital when gathering data on the surviving coins.
Four coins of the two kings William have been found in Nottinghamshire, and have been included in my research dataset. Record DUR-AA2FA6 is a penny of William I’s third coin type – known as the ‘canopy’ type (the name was coined in the early 20th century by numismatists, and refers to the fact that the portrait of the king on the obverse of the coins shows him under an architectural pediment arch, which does look a little like a canopy!). These coins were issued from the early to mid-1070s, and were therefore in use in a period of unrest, just after the serious rebellion against Norman rule in the North of the kingdom, and William’s retribution against the rebels, known as ‘The Harrying of the North’. The city of York was particularly badly affected by the Harrying, and my investigation of the ‘canopy’ type coins is revealing hints of the personal stories of the moneyers of the York mint, and how they reacted to the civil strife.
All the coins of William I and II are rare, but within this series the ‘PAXS’ type is the most common (the name comes from the design on the reverse of the coin, which has the letters of the word PAXS, meaning ‘peace’, in little circles in the angles of the cross). This was the eighth coin type issued after the Norman Conquest, and LEIC-3F7258 is a nice example found in Nottinghamshire. Unfortunately, all the coins of William I and II just have the name ‘King William’ on them, so it’s not immediately clear which ones were issued by William the Conqueror and which by William Rufus. There is some debate about whether these ‘PAXS’ coins were the last coins of William I or the first coins of William II. Personally I think they were issued by William Rufus, just after he took the throne in 1087, because some ‘PAXS’ coins may have been made at a mint in Abergavenny, and Norman authority in the town was not known until 1087.
