Kings of Wessex

Edward the Elder, 899-924. AR Penny, Minster type (c.910-915), west Mercian mint, Wulfgar. Small cross, +EΛDVVEΛRD REX, rev. Anglo-Saxon minster with nave, tower and side aisles on central line, VVLFGAR and cross below. 1.52 g. Ruding, pl. 16, no. 22 = CTCE 342b = SCBI Mack 768 - this coin; N.667; S.1075.
A wonderful type with an exceptional pedigree. Richly toned. Near EF. Extremely rare.

Ex L. Stack (lot 459), Cdmr. R. P. Mack (Pt. I, lot 120), L. E. Bruun (Pt. I, Lot 81), Astronomer (lot 164), H. Montagu (Pt. I, lot 602), J. B. Bergne (lot 180), E. Wigan, Lt.-Col. W. Durrant (lot 24), and T. Dimsdale (lot 612).

The mysterious, beautiful and rare exceptional types of Edward the Elder have held a fascination for numismatists ever since 13 examples were present in the fabled cabinet of Sir Robert Cotton (1571-1631), the first scholarly collection of Anglo-Saxon coins ever assembled in Britain.

In the definitive work on the period (Coinage in Tenth-Century England, British Academy, 1989), C. E. Blunt, B. H. I. H. Stewart and C. S. S. Lyon provide a detailed technical analysis of the coinage of Edward the Elder and a thorough corpus of 93 coins of the exceptional type series whose location was known to them. This shows the exceptional types are strongly associated with moneyers connected to the Chester and Shrewsbury mints and that they form a small subset of the king’s whole coinage (the Forum Hoard of 1883 and the Vatican Hoard of 1928 between them contained a total 647 pennies of Edward the Elder of which 13 pennies were exceptional types, circa 2%).

The authors conclude that 'The exceptional types were the main and perhaps the only west Mercian coinage of the Middle period of Edward’s reign (c. 910-915)… essentially the series may be regarded as the coinage of English Mercia when the king’s sister Æthelflæd was ‘Lady of the Mercians’. Her husband Ealdorman Æthelred died in 911 and she herself in 918, but it is clear that she was acting for her sick husband for some years before his death. Perhaps the ornamental types were Æthelflæd’s way of distinguishing the output of her mints from that of her brother’s. If so, their subsequent reversion to the Horizontal type, if it did not occur before her death, could have been part of Edward’s concerted action to discourage any revival of Mercian separatism.'

Of the 93 coins identified in CTCE some 59 are now in British museums, five are in European museums and Dr. Schneider was fortunate to be able to acquire a representative collection of no less than seven.