Item 1980/2 - Five letters from Christopher Blunt to Ian Stewart with one attachment and two letters from Ian Stewart to Christopher Blunt

8 items, paper

Five letters from Christopher Blunt to Ian Stewart with one attachment and two letters from Ian Stewart to Christopher Blunt:
(a) letter from Ian Stewart to Christopher Blunt, manuscript, one folio (recto & verso), dated from St George's Rd, London SE1, on 13 April 1980, reporting that he completed the chapter on the Vikings to 927 and promises to send it once it is typed. He notes that he has now incorporated large chunks of CEB's Regnald text and that parts of his Bossall/Regnald paper now appear in the historical introduction, the Viking chapter, the Bossall appendix and the conclusions. After the Vikings, he says, he will focus on the post-939 coinage, including "English bits and Viking II", but he says that he would like to see some of the material before doing anything more on imitations and irregular coinages. He is pleased that CEB acquired the "Heriger" while mentioning that he obtained the Edgar Othelriht from Spink and sent a polaroid to Edinburgh to check on its correspondence with SCBI 602.
(b) letter from Christopher Blunt to Ian Stewart, manuscript, one folio (recto & verso), dated from Ramsbury on 26 April 1980, thanking IS for the photograph of his curious irregular piece of Edgar and for the drawings of the Edinburgh 602 fragment. He says that he heard from Gunstone that [an image of] one of their coins is in the National Portrait Gallery, and he gives some details. He says that he is hoping "to make a very exciting addition" that will be relevant for IS's work on the Vikings 939-954. He is referring to the St Edmund memorial coin that was in Seaby's May Bulletin, which is in fact a "Heming" [i.e. moneyer?], a coin that he discussed in his paper on that coinage for a Suffolk local society journal [i.e. "The St Edmund Memorial Coinage", Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology, vol. 31, pt 3 (1969), pp. 234-255 & pl. 31].
(c) letter from Christopher Blunt to Ian Stewart, manuscript, one folio (recto & verso), dated from Ramsbury on 28 April 1980, informing IS of news from Elizabeth Pirie of a new moneyer for the Anlaf raven type. He also reports that her excavations at Coppergate in York have yielded a small hoard of no more than four coins, "all slightly oxidized and [...] stuck together", but once they were cleaned they appeared "about as good as new". He describes the coins as being two coins of Athelstan and two coins of Anlaf, both raven type, one of the usual moneyer ÆĐELFERD and the other of the new moneyer ODELER, and he says that Veronica [Smart] is satisfied with the name. The rest of letter discusses the coin, the spellings on it and its implications.
(d) letter from Ian Stewart to Christopher Blunt, manuscript, one folio (recto & verso), dated from St George's Rd. London SE1, on 4 May 1980, thanking CEB for the "two letters and such exciting news" and reflecting briefly on the new pieces of information.
(e) letter from Christopher Blunt to Ian Stewart, manuscript, single page, dated from Ramsbury on 26 April 1980, informing IS of further information on Regnald, including a record he had made of one illustrated by [Andrew] Fountaine in 1705 and another example that he has just seen in Camden's Britannia (1695), meaning that they now have two specimens recorded early among the Anglo-Saxon coins. Despite this, he says, "Taylor Combe [numismatist, 1774-1826] did not feel able to accept the type as English in origin or rather produced in England".
(f) letter from Christopher Blunt to Ian Stewart, manuscript, one folio (recto & verso), dated from Ramsbury on 23 June 1980, noting that his collaborations with IS and Stewart [Lyon] have given him much pleasure and that "numismatic excitements have [also] been pouring in from other sources". He refers to news from George Boon about a new hoard, the ongoing research on the Coppergate find and a little parcel mostly of coin fragments that includes an irregular crux Athelstan with the inscriptions +CMRNZ? DERWO and REEDL | + + + | BIAZN, of which he encloses a rubbing (see item (g) below). The are about a dozen lines of discussion on the piece.
(g) coin rubbing, mentioned and discussed in item (f) above.
(h) letter from Christopher Blunt to Ian Stewart, manuscript, three pages on two folios, dated from the Travellers' Club, Pall Mall, London, on 28 June 1980, saying that he has come away from their dinner and discussion of the previous evening much encouraged to continue work on the 10th century. He notes that Henry Loyn has just been elected FBA and mentions that he will look into "what Stewart [Lyon] says about Edward's 'rose' type" before moving on to discuss IS's hoard section [for their 10th-century work] and recommending additions and improvements. There is a one-page postscript that begin (and ends) on the recto of the second folio, in which CEB welcomes the suggestion that CSSL and IS "draft a preparatory historical section [for their book] and to have another separate section at the end with conclusions".