An Intimate Encounter with English Coinage in the High Middle Ages: the Case of Wulfric of Haselbury

AN INTIMATE ENCOUNTER WITH ENGLISH COINAGE IN THE HIGH MIDDLE AGES: THE CASE OF WULFRIC OF HASELBURY GILES E.M. GASPER AND SVEIN H. GULLBEKK WULFRIC of Haselbury is perhaps best known as one of a number of anchorites, early in the English medieval tradition, who became the subject of Latin Lives.1 He lived as an anchoritic priest attached to the parish church at Haselbury Plucknett in Somerset, from 1125 to his death in 1155.2 Almost all that is known of Wulfric derives from the Life composed by the Cistercian monk John of Forde (c.1140–1214). Forde Abbey had been established in 1136, as a daughter-house of Waverley Abbey, and John became a monk there, possibly in 1165.3 Wulfric had been a prominent figure for the monks at Forde, and many stories about his life were preserved within the community and among its friends.4 The testimony of Henry, abbot of Tintern and then of Waverley, was particularly vivid. In the Life itself Henry visits Wulfric five times. Wulfric was also famous in wider society, lay as well as religious, most prominently in the south-west but also farther afield. William fitzWalter, who encouraged Wulfric’s move to Haselbury, proved a consistent patron, and his family remained dedicated to Wulfric’s memory. William’s son Walter emerges as an important source for the Life. Wulfric was known to the baronage of the West Country, and at the courts of Henry I and Stephen; both monarchs visited him personally, although Stephen visited him before he became king.5 The Life appears to have been compiled at some point in the 1180s, drawing on a rich lode of oral testimony. It is a complex work, whose three-part structure does not follow a strictly chronological approach: Book 1 introduces the conversion of Wulfirc to holy life, Book 2 concerns his mystical experiences and a wider range of characters with whom he interacts, and Book 3 is a less structured series of meditations on Wulfric’s actions (cursing, prophesying, healing), and an account of his death. As is not unusual in eleventh- and twelfth-century hagiography, John of Forde’s writing is inclusive and non-judgmental of the society in which Wulfric’s life is played out.6 Such a relationship with his sources and with his subject gives John’s narrative its sense of immediacy and intimacy. The level of intimacy allows privileged access to many aspects of twelfth-century society. Not least amongst these are what the Life reveals about monetary history, and the production and use of coin. The Life of Wulfric of Haselbury provides evidence previously underused in a numismatic and monetary context for an important element in Henry I’s coinage. It also provides further evidence for the use and understanding of money Acknowledgements. Both authors would like to thank the reviewers for their helpful and insightful comments, and Rachael V. Matthews for her advice and criticism. 1 Bell 1933 comprises the current critical edition. The Life has been translated as Matarasso 2011. Matarasso notes that Bell’s is not a wholly satisfactory critical edition, and will be superseded by that of Kevin Day (Brepols, forthcoming): Matarasso 2011, 81–4. Matarasso consulted the four extant manuscripts for divergent readings in making her translation: these do not affect the passages under consideration in the current context, for which Bell’s edition is, for the time being, sufficient. In what follows Wulfric’s Life is cited by book and chapter number, followed by the page reference for the Matarasso translation; the Bell edition is referenced when appropriate. For more specific literature on Wulfric himself see Mayr-Harting 1975 and more recently Alexander 2002. A recent reassessment of the English medieval anchoritic tradition is Licence 2011. 2 Licence 2011, 186, n.48. 3 For an excellent summary of the lives of John and Wulfric see Matarasso 2011, 2–10. On John’s place as an author within the Cistercian Order see Holdsworth 1961. Wider dimensions of John’s thought are addressed in Costello and Holdsworth 1996. 4 Further comments on the sources for John of Forde’s interest in Wulfric, including two monks of the house alive in the 1180s whom he had known, can be found in Matarasso 1996. 5 The Life of Wulfric, 2.16; Matarasso 2011, 150. 6 Matarasso 2011, 76, puts this well: ‘Lay men and women . here rub shoulders with monks and clerics without any under- lining of difference. Those who show themselves to least advantage tend to be monks and clerics, whereas ordinary people are praised as religious, God-fearing and devout.’ Giles E.M. Gasper and Svein H. Gullbekk, ‘An intimate encounter with English coinage in the High Middle Ages: the case of Wulfric of Haselbury’, British Numismatic Journal 83 (2013), 112–19. ISSN 0143–8956. © British Numismatic Society. AN INTIMATE ENCOUNTER WITH ENGLISH COINAGE 113 in the period, the more striking because it is from a personal point of view. The observations in the Life fuel a more complex history of monetary culture, which must take account of the nature of the sources in which references to monetary use are found. John of Forde obviously did not set out to write a history of Wulfric’s use of coin. However, when, where and in what context monetary matters are mentioned are significant both in terms of what they describe, but also in terms of how this fits into John’s broader literary, spiritual and theological purpose. The Life begins with Wulfric’s conversion to a strict religious life. As a priest he enjoyed hawking and hunting, but while so engaged: . a fellow appeared – a poor man by his dress and aspect – who begged him meekly for a new coin. There was a fresh minting in England then, in the days of King Henry I, but being new the coins were still uncommon.7 This is probably the oldest literary reference to a recoinage in English history. Recoinage in England had a considerable history by the first third of the twelfth century. Eadgar intro- duced the system of recoinages in a monetary reform c.973, and from this date English coinage was renewed on a regular basis. This process continued after the Norman Conquest, and in the reign of Henry I (1100–35) recoinages were undertaken on fifteen occasions. Recoinage involved the withdrawal of coins in circulation and their replacement by new, fresh, coins with different designs. The reference in the Life of Wulfric includes not only a general comment on recoinages [nova moneta], but makes further observations on the distribution of a new coinage at a moment when these new coins had not yet become generally available and they were still a novelty and something of which people would take notice. The rarity of these new coins offers a rare insight into how the process of recoinages impacted upon the coin circulation in a period of transition between old and new types. Haselbury was close to several significant centres of power: Exeter is some 65 miles to the west, Winchester slightly nearer to the east some 60 miles away, and the major royal castle of Corfe was only 26 miles south. Within the Anglo-Norman realm too, the Dorset coastline was important in cross-Channel communication. Geographical, economic and political isolation may or may not account for Wulfric’s lack of coin. The potential issues in distribution of coin which the passage highlighted may point to is the more general issue of the volume of coins in circulation in twelfth-century England, and the question of the effects of a relatively low volume of coin on payment and exchange; individual coins had to ‘work’, arguably, much harder. Whatever the case and whether or not this passage reflects a first hand account (although the individuals concerned were dead at the time when John wrote, his source had known Wulfric personally) it surely suggests an author familiar with the nature of recoinages. For an author writing in the 1180s the wide-reaching monetary reforms of Henry II in 1180 would have been a natural point of reference. The opening episode of the Life continues with use of the same level of detail and familiarity, with particular reference to a halfpenny. When Wulfric replied that he did not know whether he had a new coin about him, the other said: ‘Look in your purse and you’ll find tuppence halfpenny there’. Left speechless by this reply, he searched in his pouch and, finding just what the other had said, devoutly offered what was being asked.8 The halfpenny or obol was not uncommon in German and French society in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and it was minted in Anglo-Saxon England in the ninth and tenth centuries. The reintroduction of round halfpennies after the Norman Conquest can be attributed to Henry I (1100–35) in c.1108.9 This was recorded by the chronicler John of Worcester (writing c.1131) and by subsequent medieval authors, but the first to identify a halfpenny of Henry I 7 The Life of Wulfric, 1.1, Matarasso 2011, 97; Bell 1933, 13: ‘Quadam namque die, dum de huius generis exercitio quiddam haberet in minibus et huic insaniae cui manus dederat non segniter militaret, affuit vir ex insperato vultum et habitum perferens pauperis qui et ab eo novum nummum in eleemosynam supplex expetiit. Habebat autem tunc temporis in Anglia nummum novum in diebus Henrici regis primi, sed rarum adhuc prae novitiate nummismatis’. 8 The Life of Wulfric, 1.1; Matarasso 2011, 98; Bell 1933, 13–14: ‘Cui cum ille nescire se diceret si nummum novum prae minibus haberet: “Respice,” ait, “in marsupium tuum et duos in eo et semis invenies.” Quo ille response obstupescens inspexit loculum suum et ita ut dictam erat inveniens, quod petebatur devotus obtulit’.

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