NEW BOOK: A CATALOGUE OF ANGLO-GALLIC COINS

A CATALOGUE OF ANGLO-GALLIC COINS of Aquitaine, Bergerac, Issoudun, Ponthieu and Poitou and the Royal coins of Henry V and VI.

The collecting of Anglo-Gallic was brought to the notice of those who collected coins in A Series of above Two Hundred Anglo-Gallic or Norman and Aquitan Coins of the Antient Kings of England; Exhibited in Sixteen Copper-Plates, and Illustrated in Twelve Letters, Addressed to the Society of Antiquaries of London, and several of its Members written by Andrew Coltee Ducarel, and published and sold in 1757 by E Withers who operated from the Seven-Stars, between the Temple-Gates, in Fleet-Street. It would be nice to think that he was an ancestor of mine, but it is most unlikely.

Ducarel, who had been born in Normandy in 1713, was referring to the fact that between 1154 and 1453 the Plantagenet kings of England had interests in France, and the so-called ‘Anglo-Gallic’ coins are the results of coining in those areas by English monarchs in their various capacities as Duke, or Prince of Aquitaine, Earl of Poitou, or count of this, that, or the other.

Ducarel derived much from several books including Les figures des monnoyes de France by Jean Baptiste Haultin in 1619 and especially the Abbé Venuti’s Dissertation historique sur les monoyes que les Anglais ont frappées en Aquitaine, et dans d’autres Provinces de France, published in 1754. Of considerable importance too was Claude Gros de Boze, keeper of the French royal collection of coins, whom Ducarel met in Paris and with whom he later corresponded. Boze had, in 1752, published his work on French feudal coins Monnoyes des prelats & barons de France, which contained much that was of use to later authors.

In the late 1700s Edward Hawkins began to compile a catalogue of the coins that were then in the collection of the British Museum. It was published in 1826. Just four years later George R Ainslie published his opus magnum on the subject, though for some reason best known to himself, did not to put his name on it ! Ainslie preferred the description ‘Anglo-French’ coins to that of ‘Anglo-Gallic’.

The next advance came about eighty years later, when a well-researched series of articles by Lionel M Hewlett began to appear in the Numismatic Chronicle. These were made available to a wider public in 1920, when A H Baldwin and Sons published them in one volume, providing a catalogue of the then known coins that was easy to read and use and contained the latest thoughts and advances.

For sixty years Hewlett’s book remained the standard reference on the subject, and is still worth reading today. However, like all good books, it eventually went out of print and became difficult to find.

In 1984, Spink published The Anglo-Gallic Coins, by E R Duncan Elias, a collector and enthusiast. He had been researching and collecting since the early 1960s and possibly even before that. He was a Dutchman who spoke excellent English and was a visitor to BANS congresses for several years.

Now, although 1984 does not seem, to some of us, to be a long time ago, thirty years is nevertheless almost half a life time, and it is high time to take advantage of the immense progress made by photography, computers, communication, typesetting and printing, and Galata Print is now getting very close to publishing a new book on the subject.

The authors, Paul and Bente Withers, and Steve Ford, have been researching and/or collecting Anglo-Gallic coins for a dozen years or longer and during that time enjoyed access to major and minor museums at home and abroad, dealers and auction houses, and were allowed to photograph most important public collections and many private ones. For more than a decade thousands of coins have been photographed and recorded, old books and auction catalogues consulted, and the internet trawled.

The result is a catalogue raisonnée of all known types and varieties of gold, silver and billon coins, including around 36 types and hundreds more minor varieties that were not known to Elias. Apart from the major types which Elias did not know, an exact count of the minor varieties is not possible because the items are catalogued in a different way from Elias’ work; however, there are many of them.

Using their numismatic and other skills the authors have taken the opportunity to correct errors, some of which are 30 years, and others almost 300 years old. Numerous additions and revisions have been made and the work now includes over 560 1:1 high quality colour illustrations, 280 double life-size enlargements of important features to help identification, and in addition 80 line drawings and a map – all thoughtfully and carefully presented so as to make the information more accessible to collectors, students, numismatists, dealers, and archaeologists than it has been. The information has been presented visually so that the French reader will understand it almost as well as the English reader.

This is to be compared with Elias’ 204 B&W 1:1 illustrations and 39 line drawings.

One of the problems bedeviling English numismatics for many years until the scientific study of numismatics began was the fact that English kings had no imagination when naming their sons. Thus, it is difficult to separate a series of Henries and Edwards. Whilst this has largely been done for the English series, the problems have not been conclusively solved for Anglo-Gallic coins, and there are other problems peculiar to the series.

However, the authors have carefully considered the latest hoards and discoveries and the question of which coins were minted during the reign of Edward II and those struck during the reign of Edward III. This has resulted in the reattribution of many coins. The reasoning behind the changes has been carefully explained in the text. There have also been changes of the order of the coins as perceived by Elias, so as to present them in chronological order.

Major changes have been made to the section on the coins of Bergerac minted by Henry of Lancaster, both as count and duke. No fewer than seven new types are recorded, and many dozens of sub-varieties.

The work includes an extensive bibliography of works in English and French, compiled by Steve Ford in conjunction with Andy Singer.

Also included is a time line of events in England, France and the rest of the World which some people may find thought-provoking. There is a section on lettering, which is not just for the beginner. Another section on how to identify coins. A chapter is devoted to a listing of marks other than letters, including types of crosses found in the book, mint marks, punctuation, issue marks, other secret marks and their possible meanings. The denominations are all discussed, together with the origins of their names.

Each type and sub-variety of coin is accorded a rarity rating and a table of rarity explains the how they are given. Legends are given for each obverse and reverse, and the combinations in which they occur are given. Highest and lowest known weights are listed.

The authors, listed in chronological order, are: Paul Withers, Bente R Withers and Steve Ford.

The Story of the Book

Readers may well wish to know why a Welshman, a Dane and an American have written a book about Anglo-Gallic coins ?

Why indeed ? But there are plenty of equally strange mis-matches of collecting field and nationality. The standard general reference work on German States coins, for example was written not by a German, but by an American and the standard reference on the coinage of the Anglo-Hannoverian Personal Union 1714-1837 was written, again, not by a German, but by an Englishman. Sometimes, citizens of a particular country have been woefully inadequate when it comes to writing about the coins of the land of their birth.

My own stimulus for writing this book came because I had met, several times, the late Edward Elias at British Association of Numismatic Societies congresses. Two friends who have since passed away, David Rogers and Roderick Palmer, both of whom collected Anglo-Gallic coins, were always finding minor varieties of coins that were not listed by Elias in his book. Then there was Peter Woodhead, a most hospitable gentleman, who after dinner one evening showed us some of his collection. Then, aided by the spirit of a good bottle of wine, an idea struck, why not publish a “Galata Guide” on Anglo-Gallic coins to help collectors. This was because Elias’ Anglo-Gallic Coins was more or less out of print and in any case, it was not particularly well illustrated, so we could kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. A little while later we began photographing in earnest, blissfully unaware that something that was planned to be ready within six months would take more than twelve years.

A few years later we met Steve Ford at Peter’s home and it was evident that he was a very serious collector indeed and we casually agreed on a collaborative work. Up until that time we had been intent on photographing only the very best specimens for a simple guide, however, it quickly became evident that what was now going to be necessary was that not just the nicest specimens, but everything needed to be photographed.

Curiously, at this time, a dealer who knows nothing about books rang me to ask if we were interested in buying some old and tatty books that had come in to his shop. They turned out to be Ducarel’s 1757 book on Anglo-Gallic coins, E J Hawkins Description of the Anglo-Gallic Coins in the British Museum published in 1826 and General Ainslie’s Illustrations of the Anglo-French Coinage, published in 1830. The foundation works of the series were thus in our hands. It was difficult not to regard this as an omen.

As we progressed it became evident that even in major collections much had been missed, even on the gold coins there were secret marks that were evident only on comparison with other coins of the same type. We had to visit a lot of museums for a second, or even third time. Then, about five or six years ago we got exceptional permission to photograph the Anglo-Gallic coins in the Bibliotheque nationale française, in Paris. This required several visits. Visits to other French museums followed, and even French private collectors opened their doors to us. Thus it was that a coin not seen for a century or more and only known from a line drawing in an ancient tome, was found and identified as a treasure to two young lady curators of a French provincial museum, who, until they met us had scarcely looked a coin before. We then visited other places, including Copenhagen, Berlin, and Oxford and the Celtic fringes of Edinburgh, Cardiff and the Royal Mint at Llantrissant.

During this time the catalogue had been developing, coin by coin, and an increasing number of varieties were turning up. Errors in every book from Ducarel to Elias were spotted, largely due to the wonders of modern digital photography, which mean that a coin the size of a sixpence (a dime for US readers), can be displayed and compared side-by-side with one another, both enlarged to the size of a football.

Over those dozen years cameras have improved too, and the several hundred films that had to be developed and printed for the average book are now a thing of the past. Cameras have become more difficult to use, but maybe that’s just old-fashioned me. However, the photographer’s art remains the same and all depends on lighting and keeping the camera immobile, and to that end I am still using the camera stand that I inherited from Elizabeth Pirie that was designed by Michael Dolley, probably over 30 years old and going strong.

It is not just cameras that have improved, computers have become smaller and their memories expanded, so the enormous box attached to an even larger CRT screen that stood on my desk a dozen years ago has been replaced by a lap top that will fit into a briefcase and a big flat 20 inch LCD screen. A tiny box that could fit into my pocket accommodates the immense amount of information we need to keep. And that’s just the hardware; the software too has developed, so that we can photograph a coin, draw the elements of the script used on the coin and put them onto the pages of a book within a few minutes.

Printing too has improved. Yes, we knew all about it 30 years ago, but that was black and white. The very latest presses produce colour images on which you can use a magnifying glass and they do not disappear into a mass of dots !

Well, that tells you a little about the book itself, but how did it get written ? I will not say that it was easy, it was not, but that was due largely to the coins themselves. Each bit that was written by one of the authors was edited by the other two. The biggest mistakes in any coin catalogue are faulty reporting of the legend, or inscription, easily not seen correctly, wrongly transcribed, or mis-typed. In this respect two pairs of eyes are better than one, and in this case three pairs are definitely better than two. Interpretations can vary too, but in this case three opinions nearly always came up with the correct one. E-mails flashed across the world from our little Welsh village to the middle of the USA.

Paul adds:

To visit the Galata web site, see:
www.galata.co.uk

Wayne Homren, Editor

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