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Available Online At Available online at http://britnumsoc.org/publications/Digital%20BNJ/2010.shtml THE COINAGE OF OFFA REVISITED RORY NAISMITH OFFA, king of the Mercians, came to the throne in 757 – an eventful year, which began with the murder of the long-lived King Æthelbald (716–57), and the succession to the Mercian throne of an obscure king named Beornred. But Beornred, as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle put it, ‘held [the kingdom] for but a little while and unhappily’,1 and was put to fl ight by Offa before the end of the year. The events of Offa’s reign between then and his death on 29 July 796 can be reconstructed on the basis of some forty charters, a series of entries in the Anglo- Saxon Chronicle and related historical texts and from an important group of letters associ- ated with the expatriate Northumbrian scholar Alcuin (d. 804).2 From these a great deal can be learned: about the expansion of Mercian power across all England south of the Humber save Wessex; about the displacement of old local dynasties which this process necessitated; about interaction between the Mercian court and that of Charlemagne (768–814); and about the practical and ideological foundations of kingship within Offa’s kingdom. In all this the coinage of Offa’s reign looms unusually large as an historical source, above all because of its departure from earlier monetary norms and its artistic richness,3 but also because of the relative scarcity of written sources pertaining to southern England at this time. Where charters, chronicles and archaeological sources fail, Offa’s pennies potentially provide an important window onto a dynamic and elaborate aspect of the regime. A major step forward in the understanding of Offa’s coinage has recently been taken with the publication of Derek Chick’s volume The Coinage of Offa and His Contemporaries.4 This bene- fi ts from Mr Chick’s detailed knowledge of the series and offers important insights, including a new typology which covers all surviving specimens known down to late 2006, and will allow future analyses to proceed with considerable confi dence. This paper is intended to complement Chick’s volume in two ways. First, it publishes sixty-three new coins of Offa. These are listed (with Chick type numbers) in an Appendix to this article that includes all new specimens which came to light after the Chick catalogue was closed in 2006 (see Pls 7–8). Second, it presents the state of knowledge of Offa’s coinage from a numismatic point of view, highlighting certain areas in which the availability of Chick’s catalogue has already allowed new conclusions to be reached or fresh questions put forward, particularly with regard to the Light coinage. After a brief outline of the current understanding of Offa’s coinage, the debates surrounding mint and moneyer attribution will be examined, followed by an exploration of the different types and presentation of some stylistic subgroups which can be identifi ed within the Light coinage. Finally, the relative and absolute chronology of the coinage will be examined in detail. Numismatic and chronological outline The coinage of Offa is distinguished from that of the preceding period in two major respects. Most obviously, his silver pennies are substantially broader and thinner than the early pennies Acknowledgements. Gareth Williams generously provided scans of no. 7 in the Appendix (p. 98), and details of further new fi nds and acquisitions were given by Keith Chapman, John Cross, Stewart Lyon, William MacKay and others, to all of whom I extend my thanks. 1 ‘Lytle hwile heold ond ungefealice’, A[nglo-]S[axon] C[hronicle] s.a. 755(=757), ed. Plummer 1892 I, 48–50; trans. Whitelock 1979, 176. For the possible identifi cation of this Beornred with the East Anglian ruler Beonna, see Archibald 2005, 129–30. 2 Keynes 2005 provides an up-to-date survey of Offa’s reign and the sources behind it; also important are Campbell et al. 1982, 101–28, Stenton 1971, 206–24, Kirby 2000, 134–50 and Story 2003. 3 On the artistic dimensions of Offa’s coinage see Gannon 2003. 4 Chick 2010. All type-references to this catalogue here take the form ‘Chick’. THE COINAGE OF OFFA REVISITED 77 or sceattas of the early eighth century, and were modelled on the reformed coinages of Pippin III (751–68) in the kingdom of the Franks and of Beonna (c.749–760?) in East Anglia.5 The increased surface area of the new pennies fostered the other key development of Offa’s reign: the standard adoption of legends naming king and moneyer. This new information allows much more confi dent and precise attributions of the coinage than was possible for the largely uninscribed earlier sceattas or pennies. Minting probably took place at three locations under Offa: London, Canterbury and some- where in East Anglia, possibly Ipswich.6 None of these, however, is named, and the emphasis rather seems to have been on the moneyer responsible for production. About forty moneyers are named on the fi rst broad silver pennies struck in the decades down to Offa’s death in 796. Most of these worked solely for Offa, but a few other rulers are named on the fi rst new pen- nies, among them Egbert II (c.764–784?) and Heaberht (fl . c.765), two of the last independent kings of Kent; Æthelberht II (d. 794), king of East Anglia; two archbishops of Canterbury (Jænberht (765–92) and Æthelheard (792–805)); one bishop of London (Eadberht (772ϫ82– 787ϫ89)) and, perhaps most surprisingly, Offa’s queen, Cynethryth (d. after 798).7 The extant output of these kings and moneyers comprises about 800 southern English pennies produced before 796;8 a surprisingly high fi gure given that only one small hoard deposited in Britain during the reign of Offa has ever been recorded.9 These 800 include a high proportion of coins which have come to light as single-fi nds, most of them quite recently thanks to the expansion of metal-detecting. This wealth of single-fi nds is invaluable material for the study of monetary history,10 and demonstrates that, through fi ts and starts, a large and dynamic currency, approaching that of the earlier eighth century in scale, revived in southern England under Offa.11 This data has also provided the raw material for fresh assessment of the numismatic background to the coinage. Answers to such questions as when and where certain types were produced are naturally fundamental to the interpretation of the coinage by other specialists, but are elusive and often debatable in the case of Offa’s coinage. In many particulars this and all other outlines must be taken as provisional rather than defi nitive. Offa’s coinage began in the 760s and 770s with the ‘Light coinage’,11a based probably on a target weight of c.1.30 g: the same as that of contemporary Frankish coinage. The Light coin- age can be sub-divided into two main phases (early and substantive – here designated phases I and II: see Figs 1a and b) and fi ve sub-phases. A second major reform occurred in 792/3 which established a uniform design at all three mints and a new weight standard of c.1.45 g.12 This last phase of the coinage is consequently known as the ‘Heavy coinage’; it constituted the third main phase of Offa’s coinage (here designated phase III: see Fig. 1c). Fig. 1a–c. Chick 6a, 10p and 203a. The three main phases of Offa’s coinage: the early issues (c.760/75–c.784/5), the substantive Light coinage (c.784/5–792/3) and the Heavy coinage (792/3–6). 5 See Archibald 1985 and MEC I, 190–266. On the new physical technique used to make Pippin and Offa’s pennies, see Blackburn 1995, 548. 6 On the mints of Offa’s reign, and alternative suggestions as to their number, see below, pp. 78–80. 7 On Cynethryth’s political standing see Stafford 2001, 37–40. 8 There are also three associated gold coins: Chick 2010, types 1–3 and Blackburn 2007. 9 This hoard was found over several years at Aiskew, North Yorkshire, in the 1990s and 2000s, and comprised fourteen pennies of Offa and his contemporaries. Its deposition probably occurred a little after the inception of the substantive Light coinage in c.784/5. Some ‘mini-hoards’ of two or three pennies of Offa may also have been found in modern times, though these can be diffi cult to identify with certainty: Metcalf 2009, 10 and 27. It is probable that at least one further hoard of pennies of Offa was discovered at some point before the eighteenth century: Blunt 1961, 52. 10 On these aspects of the coinage see especially Chick 2005 and Metcalf 2009. 11 Metcalf 2009, 4–6. 11a It has been proposed that Offa’s coinage began with sceattas in his name, though these should probably be seen as late Merovingian issues: see Chick 2010. 12 See below, pp. 88–9. 78 THE COINAGE OF OFFA REVISITED The earliest part of Offa’s coinage was very small in scale, and has only come to promi- nence in the last two decades (phase Ia). Yet thanks largely to the research of Derek Chick and Michael Metcalf it has come to provide a relatively fi xed point of clarity which, with the Heavy coinage (phase III), serves to sandwich the much more problematic substantive Light coinage.13 This fi rst segment of the Light coinage was followed by an obscure phase of ‘inter- mediate’ coinage (phase Ib) struck probably in the late 770s and early 780s.
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