ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS
The bulk of the coins, however, were Danish, issued by Danish kings of Northumbria, many of them from York. From the circumstances of its discovery it may well be believed that the hoard formed the treasure chest of this defeated and retreating army. The evidence, divested of other stories, is free from discrepancies. By this discovery Mr. Andrew has recovered a page of English history.
The Cuerdale hoard is by far the greatest found in Lancashire, containing 10,000 silver coins and nearly 1,000 ounces of silver ingots. With that find, however, must be classed another, though smaller, and made at a much earlier date. A hoard of some 300 silver pennies was discovered in 1611 at Harkirke, which lies toward the sea-coast between Crosby and Formby. The coins have long since been scattered, but fortunately some thirty-five were engraved in the latter part of the seventeenth century, and from the still extant plate it may be seen that they belonged to Alfred, Edward the Elder, the Danish king Cnut (Guthferth) of Northumbria, and the ecclesiastical coinages of York and East Anglia. There was also a certain number of foreign coins, and the date of deposit must have been within a few years of that of the Cuerdale hoard. There are numerous records of other finds. On Halton Moor, five miles from Lancaster, there was found in 1815 a silver cup containing 860 silver coins of Canute, with certain ornaments which include a torque of silver wire.[1] The coins are described in a letter by Mr. T. Combe, written from the British Museum, as including 21 Danish and 379 of Canute. The latter were nearly all of one type, having on the obverse the head of the king with helmet and sceptre, and on the reverse a cross within the inner circle with amulets in the four angles. They were minted at Exeter (1), Cambridge [grant bricge] (1), Leicester (1), Lincoln (4), London (4), Maldon (1), York (366), and Winchester (1). The cup and torque of silver will be described later.
Though isolated finds of coins cannot be relied on as evidence as to the state of the particular district in which they are found, the discovery in northern Lancashire of some of the early Northumbrian coins is of sufficient interest to be noted. Some stycas[2] of the Northumbrian kings Eanred and Ethelred and of Archbishop Vigmund were found in a cave with miscellaneous objects at Merlewood, Grange over Sands. The cave floor as usual seems to represent several ages. In addition to some black pottery and charcoal were a few fragments of glass. Besides these were two rusted iron objects, perhaps fibulae. Below the deposit, it is said, were suggestions of a rough flooring. The animal remains included bones of a man, of red deer, roe deer, bos longifrons, wolf, pig, badger, and cat. In the same vicinity, at Castlehead near Grange, there were found, c. 1775, a number of stycas of Northumbrian kings, stated in one record[3] to be ninety-five in all, together with animal remains, rings of silver, iron, and brass, beads of stone, lead, clay, and glass, and numerous Roman coins.
- ↑ Arch. xviii. 197, with plates xvii. xviii.
- ↑ Cumb. and Westmd. Ant. Soc. Trans. xii. 277. From the description given the stycas are apparently as follows:—1. Obv., Eanred Rex; rev., Gaduteis. 2. Obv. Edilred Rex; rev., Eardulf [retrograde]. 3. Obv., Edelred Rex; rev., Fordred. 4. Obv., Erded Rex [inscription blundered]; rev., Leofdegn. 5. Obv., Vigmund Irep.; rev., Coenred. 6. Undecipherable. 7. Broken and undecipherable.
- ↑ Baines, Hist. Lancs. (Harland), ii. 676
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