A New Database of the Moneyers from Late Anglo-Saxon and Early Anglo-Norman England

Through my ongoing work in creating the Moneyers of England Database, certain patterns have become clear in regards to the naming structures of moneyers known to have operated in mints between Edgar’s Reform and Domesday Book.  Certain names appear to be associated directly with the role of moneyer.  By associating these patterns with a specific occupation, an extrapolation of individual geographic and societal placement through comparative review of extant charters, deeds and manuscripts can be conducted.  The witness activity of these moneyers provides a broader interpretation of the role and allows for an expansion of the prosopographical networks of the office. This study of the moneyers expands the current dialogue on the transition between the Anglo-Saxons and Norman conquerors and assist in the interpretation of the potential pre-Conquest administrative statehood of the Isles.

The poster will display the database itself, providing visual components of the information that can be translated into graphical presentations and mapping illustrations that outline the entirety of the minting endeavor.  The presentation will also outline the formative onomastic constructs that allow the interpretation of the position of moneyer as a pre-guild hereditary structure that was carried on by successive generations irrespective of the aristocratic turmoil of the late tenth and early eleventh centuries in England.

Analysis of Anglo-Saxon Writs, Domesday Book, Regesta Regum Ango-Normannorum and other primary texts, in conjunction with numismatic studies on Anglo-Saxon to Anglo-Norman coinage and minting and the Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England database out of King's College London, will provide a broad view of the moneyers themselves, allowing for a prosopographic interpretation of the group, their placement within society and their development into a non-noble form of aristocracy within the late Anglo-Saxon period through the Norman Conquest.  This research provides the groundwork for a new method by which to study the transition from the Anglo-Saxon to the post-Conquest era and will link the administrative aspects of both periods in a different way.