Archaeology Tuesdays – Short Cross Penny of Henry II

On 5 July 1902, workmen at 25 High Street, Colchester, uncovered a lead canister buried in the back yard. On opening it, they discovered between eleven and twelve thousand silver short cross pennies minted in England, Scotland and Ireland, as well as 23 minted overseas. The most recent coin had been minted in 1237, so the hoard probably dates from shortly after then. A second hoard, also in a lead canister, turned up in the same garden, only 20 m away, in 1969. This one contained 14,065 coins, dating from up to 1278. A third lead container, with only one coin inside, dated 1247/8, was found only 200 m away in 2000.

The coin pictured is a short cross penny from the 1902 hoard, minted in London on behalf of Henry II between 1180 and 1189. Henry II was the son of the Empress Matilda, who had fought a bitter civil war against Stephen. She was the daughter and heir of Henry I, who under English law ought to have succeeded to the throne when he died in 1135. Stephen was Henry I’s nephew and had sworn allegiance to Matilda in 1127, recognising her as the future queen. However, when Henry died, Stephen rushed to England to be chosen by the barons as king. Although the pope agreed to this arrangement in 1136, Matilda invaded in 1139 to claim what was – according to her supporters – rightfully hers.

The civil war rumbled on for years, with neither side gaining a distinct advantage. Stephen tried to prevent Matilda or her son Henry from succeeding him by having his own son, Eustace, crowned joint king of England in 1152. The church refused to co-operate and, when Eustace died prematurely in 1153, Stephen grudgingly negotiated the Treaty of Wallingford, which proclaimed Henry as his heir. Stephen died in the following year and Henry became king.

Henry II ruled an empire that stretched from the Scottish border in the north to the Pyrenees in the south. He inherited his continental territories from his father, Geoffroy Plantagenet, Count of Anjou, and his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine. During his reign of thirty-five years, he spent only thirteen of them in England. He is remembered for two main things: his quarrel with Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, which led to Thomas’s murder, and his interest in reforming English law.

Henry introduced a penny with a short, equal-armed cross on the reverse in 1180. They stayed the standard design until 1247, even keeping the name of the king as hENRICVS during the reigns of Richard I and John. Richard did mint coins in his own name in Aquitaine, while John did as Lord of Ireland. This caused early numismatists no end of problems, as they thought that either these kings did not issue coins or that none have survived. Henry III reformed the coinage in 1147, bringing in a design with a cross that extended to the edge of the coin. This design remained in use until 1509, during the reign of Henry VII.

How did a coin found in Colchester come into the possession of North Hertfordshire Museum? In the years after the hoard’s first discovery, Colchester Corporation began sending examples to national and provincial museums, as well as to private collectors. Letchworth Museum received nine coins from the hoard: two of Henry II, two of Richard I, three of John and two of Henry III. They were entered into the Accessions Register in February 1927 but were already in the museum collections. It is possible that they were part of the ’19 English Silver Coins’ that form the first entry in the register, 1916.1, on 20 March 1916.

Why were the coins buried in such huge numbers? Hoards are found throughout history, often put into the ground during times of economic or political crisis. The date of the second hoard, about 1278, has been linked with Edward I’s Statutum de Judaismo (‘Statute of the Jewry’), issued in 1275. Among the provisions of the statute, lending at high interest rates (usury) was outlawed, some debts to Jewish money-lenders were written off, and Jewish people could live only in certain designated towns, where they had to wear a yellow felt badge on their clothing. The statue effectively put an end to Jewish banking businesses, and wealthy bankers may have hidden their capital for safe keeping. The canisters found in Colchester were perhaps under-floor ‘safes’ used by bankers, as 25 High Street was probably in the city’s ghetto.

Like so many museum objects, the back-story of this coin holds more interest than the artefact itself. This is one of the reasons why archaeologists bristle when the media focus on reporting discoveries as ‘treasure’ worth so many thousands of pounds. However, this financial value pales into insignificance when put beside the priceless historical information such discoveries can yield.

Written by Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews