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.


Monday, 21 October 2024

An Anglo-Saxon replica of a gold solidus of Emperor Honorius


My friend Adrian Marsden, who is the numismatist with the Norfolk Historic Environment Service, and often involved in identifying coins found by treasure hunters, was back on the BBC News website yesterday with an interesting find.

This was an Anglo-Saxon replica of a gold solidus issued by the Emperor Honorius. It is not a forged coin but a copy as it includes a suspension loop. Roman coins were clearly prized as personal jewellery or talismans in the centuries after the Western Empire disintegrated and this quite skilful copy in gold shows that there was a market for such copies.

The piece was found in a field at Attleborough in southern central Norfolk and not in connection with other items of specie. Whether it was lost, or has been moved over the centuries by ploughing, or if it had once been buried with its owner is unknown. It is however a further insight into the post-Roman world of Anglo-Saxon settlers and their  sense of Roman civilisation as it crumbled around them.




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