The Durham mint: the control, organization, profits and out put of an ecclesiastical mint

Abstract

The university libraries of Durham and Cambridge have been the indispensable foundation of my work. I have spent countless enjoyable and extremely fruitful hours in the Archives and Special Collections department of Durham University Library, and in the Dean and Chapter Library of Durham Cathedral. The archivists and librarians of those two great sources of material and inspiration for Durham historians have always been helpful, often beyond the call of duty. Mr Patrick Musset and Mr Alan Piper helped me with many tricky matters of palaeography, and Ms Linda Drury has been a source of wisdom concerning Weardale mining. Mr Roger Norris has always offered a friendly and tolerant welcome in the Dean and Chapter Library. My greatest debt of gratitude in the Durham fellowship of archivists and librarians is to Mr Martin Snape, who laboriously checked my calendar of documentary evidence, and brought to my attention the mint indenture of 1367. The Public Record Office and the Borthwick Institute, University of York, have also been safe havens of documentary research, and their staffs have been unfailing in their friendly help. Dr Constance Fraser generously provided many transcripts of PRO documents from the reigns of Edward I and Edward, produced for her own research, which have been invaluable. Miss Ethel Stokes deserves an extremely posthumous mention for her excellent transcripts of thirteenth- century PRO documents, made for H.B.E. Fox shortly before the First World War. Mrs Yvonne Harvey and Dr Barrie Cook have provided unpublished information about the dies in the PRO and the British Museum respectively. Miss M.M. Archibald, Mr Christopher Bailey, Mr Edward Besly, Ms Kristin Bornholdt, Dr Cook, Mr Robert Heslip, Mr N.M.McQ. Holmes, Mr D. Lockwood, Mr Nicholas Mayhew, and Mr D. Robinson have very generously provided unpublished hoard data. The corpus of hoards would be much poorer without the contributions of Mr Besly, Dr Cook, and Mr Holmes in particular. Mr Holmes and Mr Keith Sugden have patiently answered onerous enquiries about obscure hoard publications. Dr Sean Miller has provided important data from the Early Medieval Corpus of single finds. The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, the British Museum, Sunderland Museums, and last but not least my employers the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, have provided coins for illustration. Four collectors have also allowed their coins to be illustrated: Mr Joe Bispham, Mr Denis Martin, Dr Ian Taylor, and Mr Robert Thomas. Professor T.V. Buttrey has read the thesis with great care, saving me from a multitude of errors, although he could not save me from the sin of attempting to estimate mint outputs. Dr Mark Blackburn, Dr Robin Eaglen, Mr Mayhew, Mr Jeffrey North, Dr Peter Spufford, and Lord Stewartby have read parts of the thesis and offered many valuable comments and suggestions. They and others have greatly encouraged me in a seemingly interminable project by their interest in its progress, and Mr David Palmer and Mr Christopher Wren also deserve a particularly honourable mention in that regard. The laurel must go to my supervisor, Mr John Casey, who has shown superhuman endurance in the six years since he first succumbed to the obviously mad idea that a Roman archaeologist could supervise a thesis on a medieval mint. John has been a good supervisor, and a good friend. My greatest regret in completing this thesis is that my mother, Vera, and father, George, did not live to see the end of a project that depended so much upon their love and encouragement.