Featured The lives, untimely deaths, and groats of the first five King James' of Scotland

Why not? Shortly after it was struck Berwick became a part of Scotland and the coins minted first for Robert I were struck there ca. 1318. Much of the early coinage in Scotland back to King David I was originated in Berwick. Berwick literally changed countries several times over history before becoming a permanent possession of England.

 

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Thanks for the reassurances, @scottishmoney. ...Except, Oh, Rats, wouldn't you know it, I can't find any pics at this point. Sorry to disappoint. (It's only over the last small handful of years that I've been trying to put all of this onto a thumb drive; the earlier pics (--fun typo: "picts") have had a decidedly checquered history....) It's only on the (maybe) highish side of a middling example, anyway.

 

...Well, okay, here's my third cut half of William the Lion. I bought that many to try to 'reconstruct' a whole one, but this was easily the best of them.

 

...Found this one, on a document I've been working on, and not, for too many years now. (287 pages, fully annotated; single-spaced, smaller font than I get along with; doubt I'll ever finish it.) Yes, these are the Only Pics; Sorry.

Out of sheer sloth, here's the description, lifted directly from the draft.
AR cut halfpenny of Carlisle, issued in the name of King Stephen. Cross moline / ‘Watford’ type, originally issued c. 1136-1145.
Obv. Collar, forearm and right hand of Stephen.
[From c. 8 o’clock:] +STI[EFNE REX] (‘STIEFNE REX;’ King Stephen).
Rev. Right half of a cross moline, fleurs de lis in each angle.
[From 1 o’clock:] +E[R]EB/[-\Id ON CAI]2. (‘[H]EREBALD ON CAR[LISLE];’ the moneyer Herebald of Carlisle).
North 873, Spink 1278.

The ‘Watford’ issues of Carlisle have recently been reassigned from official issues of Stephen to autonomous ones of Henry of Scots, on the basis of Scots control of Carlisle during the period. The problem provides an interesting instance of the dialectic between historical and specifically numismatic research. On the numismatic evidence, the historian David Crouch has argued that Carlisle was part of ‘a continuing English [royal], not Scots, polity....well into the 1140s, when the local issues of King David [of Scots] and Earl Henry superseded [the ‘Watford’ coinage]’ (David Crouch, The Reign of King Stephen (Harlow, Essex /London, Longman /Pearson, 2000), 323 and n. 13).

More recently, the Fitzwilliam Museum, on its website for the Conte Collection of Norman and Angevin coins, has reassigned the ‘Watford’ coinage of Carlisle to Henry of Scots, on the basis of the earlier consensus that “Carlisle was established as a mint c. 1123 by Henry I, but it was captured in January 1136 by the Scots under whose control it remained until 1157.” (The entry for this issue is found below: http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/gallery/conte/gallery/gallery_09.html.) As Matthew elaborates, Henry of Huntingdon’s father, David I of Scots, lost no time exploiting the instability of Stephen’s reign.
“Hav[ing] seen Henry I’s creation of a new bishopric at Carlisle in 1133 as a bid to consolidate the very recently imposed English control over Cumbria[, David was] determin[ed] to restore some independence of action after years of English protection, and his plans involved recovery of lands not only in Cumbria but in northern-eastern England [at the opposite end of the border], which he believed to be properly subject to the kings of Scotland.” (Matthew, Donald. King Stephen. London: Hambledon and London, 2003. P. 69.)

...And, wouldn't you know it, the operant pages of the Fitzwilliam Museum website seem to be down. (--Unless it's my desktop, now in the middling stages of electro-neural dementia.) But if this was issued by Henry of Huntingdon in Stephen's name, it would qualify not only as a Scottish issue, but, at least with that margin of rhetorical license, a Stephen-era 'baronial' one. Henry 'of Scots' was also earl of Huntingdon, by maternal descent, which may have been a factor in his continuation of the Watford issue.

 

Malcolm IV? Good luck. He is one monarch I will probably never own an example of a coin of. I have all the other monarchs save him, and the 1st two Alexanders. My David I(1124-1153) penny is from when the Scots captured the silver mines near Carlisle. Early on, coinage from Scotland appeared only whence the Scots controlled the region around Carlisle and Berwick in what is now Northern England.

 

Alexander I did not issue any coins.

I am not super optimistic about acquiring a Malcolm, but I'll give it a try. I have only ever seen one sold.

My David I is from the early period when he was imitating Henry I. This coin is thought to be the first coin of Scotland, produced at Carlisle when the town and mint fell into Scottish hands. Warning, it's in rough shape!

 

Here are the five coins together

 

I purposely did not call the groat a fourpence, as unlike in England the groat did not have a constant value, and in fact was not worth four pence during the time of any of the James’

Here are the values of my coins:

James I: 6 pence
James II: 12 pence
James III: 14 pence
James IV: 12 pence
James V: 18 pence

The weight of the coins certainly changed but the size did not substantially. There are other coin types not represented in this collection, some of which were transitional coins which share details from the prior reign. These are generally considered the “main” types.

 

Awesome write up and beautiful coins!
What a fascinating time period.
I’m going to have to start paying attention to those coin types.
Thanks for sharing!

 

The Imitation Game (released December 25, 2014) was a movie about Alan Turing and the cryptanalysts at Bletchley Park. Keira Knightley played the role of Joan Clarke. Joan Elisabeth Lowther Murray (nee Clarke) was a brilliant mathematician, and an accomplished code-breaker. Clarke was also a numismatist.

The British Numismatic Society granted her a Sanford Saltus Gold Medal in 1986. By then she was married; and to the BNS, she was Joan E. L. Murray. You can find a brief biography in Wikipedia, of course, but as Joan Clarke.

Lord Stewartby (Bernard Harold Ian Halley Stewart), one of her collaborators in the coinage of Scotland, wrote the obituary for the British Numismatic Journal Vol. 67 No. 13, pg 162-167. Online here: www.britnumsoc.org/publications/Digital%20BNJ/pdfs/1997_BNJ_67_13.pdf)) That essay provided a bibliography, including papers she read at society meetings, but did not publish.

Her husband, Lieutenant-Colonel John Kenneth Ronald (Jock) Murray, who also worked at the Government Communications Headquarters, introduced her to the problems attendant in sequencing the gold unicorns and heavy groats of the kings James III and James IV of Scotland. Joan E. L. Murray stands out among Saltus awardees for having done all of her work in the area of Scottish numismatics.

 

Thanks, @kaparthy, for sending me to the Wiki article. ...Another movie (starting with Keira Knightley) I shouldn't have missed.

 

The groats in the left and right of your photo are pretty hard to find in good condition - well done!

 

Absolutely enthralling. So many fascinating History lessons here; much more gripping than most school lessons were.Thank you everyone.

 

Another groat

James IV Groat (Twelvepence) n.d. Light Coinage (c.1496-1513) 24 mm 1.82 g
Almost identical to Nap's coin but not in quiteas good cond

 

That's also a nice example of James IV. Big fan of the coinage of James III, IV, and V.

 

2 coins of James V

James V Billon Plack (Fourpence) 1st coinage n.d. (1513-26)


James V 1/3 Groat (Sixpence) 2nd coinage n.d. (1526-37) Nice Renaissance portrait

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