Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Wednesday 12 April 2023

Numismatic discoveries 3 : A Cavalier’s savings from the Civil War


Last September I posted in A soldier’s savings from the Wars of the Roses about what is believed to have been the money - all 2s 3d of it and a gold ring - of a soldier from the later 1470s which was found buried near Harrogate in 2020.

What appears to be a similar find of a soldier’s savings, but this time forming a much larger hoard, and comprised this time of gold coins, and from the time of the English Civil War, has been found at Box in Wiltshire. The suggestion is that the fourteen gold coins were buried on the eve of the battle of Lansdowne near Bath, fought on July 5th 1643, by a Royalist officer who did not survive the day.

An account of the coins and of their discovery by a detectorist can be read in an article from the Swindon Advertiser at Novice metal detectorist finds Civil War coins worth up to £24,000 in Wiltshire


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