Item 1976/1 - Letter from Peter Seaby with six attachments

7 items, paper

Letter from Peter Seaby, in typescript, single page, dated 5 November 1976, with six attachments; in the letter PJS thanks IS for his letter and "the note of your representations regarding Treasure Trove". He says that the thrymsa the firm had earlier in the year came from a client in the US who has been selling his European and Anglo-Saxon coins and focusing on building up his collection of later English material. The coin went to a collector in Denmark.
The attachments include:
(a) photocopy of a brief note of J. Y. Akerman, "On a gold coin found near Canterbury", Numismatic Chronicle, n.s., vol. 5 (1865), pp. 166-167, which describes a coin that is anepigraphic on the obverse, with head in profile to right, and has a runic inscription on the reverse.
(b) photocopy of a page from a sale "Catalogue of Anglo-Saxon and Norman coins", Wednesday 20 November 1974, showing three thrymsas, the second with with runic or quasi-runic epigraphy and the last from the Witmen group.
(c) cuttings from a photocopy of a sales catalogue showing lot G135, described as a gold thrymsa of the Witmen derivative type.
(d) typescript of paper, 7pp, untitled, unattributed and undated, but possibly of Philip Grierson (see below). Incipit: "Though less considerable as a people at least until the eighth century than the Franks, the Visigoths and the Lombards, who succeeded to the lands of the Roman Empire on the Continent of Europe, the Anglo-Saxons are of special importance to the historian in that there was in the British Isles a complete break with Roman civilization". Excipit: "The English evidence shows that the introduction of a regular silver coinage was neither as inevitable nor as rapid as might have been supposed".
(e) typescript of paper, 5pp, untitled, unattributed and undated, recording the comments on a paper by Philip Grierson. Incipit: "Discussion after the delivery of Mr Grierson's paper mainly centred on relationship between jewellery and coined money, and their economic functions in societies where the use of coinage was limited and small denominations were unknown". Excipit: "These points received such unquestioned acceptance that Mr Grierson had to remind his audience towards the end that the theory was entirely his own and had not yet been submitted to the criticism either of philologists or of numismatics".
(f) typescript of paper, 8pp, entitled "III. The Break with Roman Coinage", unattributed and undated, with numerous lacunae built into the text and notes for the addition of factual and bibliographic details, which indeed have been added in manuscript, apparently in the hand of IS; the additions are indicated in the incipit and excipit in square brackets. Incipit: "It is important to Mr G's theme that the [gold] coins of A-S England are uniquely informative about the monetary system of the Germanic people[s] since in this country there was a complete break with Roman traditions and institutions". Excipit: "The continued circulation and manufacture of coins in Britain during the fifth and sixth centuries seems to be highly improbable on every account".