The purpose of this note is to record two new coins of the Cork mint of Edward IV, a groat and, significantly, a penny; and to discuss a third new groat, recorded in 2023 by the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS). The groats most likely date to the second reign of Edward IV; the penny may belong to either.
Ireland
Titled Crown / First Cross and Pellets cross-coinage reverse die links at Waterford, 1465 – Oisín Mac Conamhna
The purpose of this note is to record cross-coinage reverse die links between Titled Crown (1463-5) and First Cross and Pellet (1465-7) coinage groats and pennies at Waterford.
A fourth Cross and Pellets halfgroat of Drogheda – Oisín Mac Conamhna and Philip Russell
A detecting find from Lincolnshire, the coin, despite its poor condition, is of significance in that it is indeed a Drogheda Cross and Pellets halfgroat, S.6371, and so deserving of record.
The attestation of Edward IV Irish penny portrait “M” at Waterford – Oisín Mac Conamhna
The purpose of this note is to record the attestation of the Edward IV Irish penny portrait “M” at Waterford, on a specimen that has come to the author’s attention recently. The portrait was not noted specifically by Burns 2017 in his foundational work on the series, but is labelled here by extending his portrait classification scheme (which ends with portrait “L”) to the next available letter.
O’Neill Money: The Irish “Rebel Money” of the 1640s, the battle flag of the Confederated Catholics, and Eoghan Ruadh Ua Néill – Oisín Mac Conamhna
Irish “Rebel Money” has long been a numismatic enigma, as no record of its production survives. This note highlights that the encircled cross potent on the obverse of the coinage was the emblem on the battle flag of the Confederated Catholics, and attributes the production of the coinage to Eoghan Ruadh Ua Néill, the only Irish general since the advent of firearms to defeat a regular British army on an open battlefield; and dates the coinage to the immediate aftermath of the battle of Binn Bhorb (Benburb) in June 1646, two months after Ua Néill received approximately £10,000 in silver from Rome.
Seeking the Provenance of an Unusual Hiberno-Scandinavian Coin – Robert Page
Hopefully a reader may be able to assist with the quest to discover where the interesting coin illustrated above came from. The earliest appearance of the coin that the author is aware of is the 2001 Spink auction containing coins of the Chown collection, and it is hoped that any reader with earlier auction catalogues containing Hiberno-Scandinavian coins may be able to locate it, and determine it’s original provenance.
A sixth Cork groat of the readeption of Henry VI – Gregory Edmund, Christoffer Gompakis and Oisín Mac Conamhna
This article describes a new specimen of a Cork groat of Henry VI, found recently in Pembrokeshire, with novel features that advance understanding of the chronology of the Desmond coinages of the 1470s.
An Unpublished Waterford Penny Type of Edward IV – Oisín Mac Conamhna
The purpose of this brief note is to record a type of Waterford penny of Edward IV that has not been published before.
An Edward IV Dublin (?) penny with cinquefoils by neck – Oisín Mac Conamhna and James Mayer
A fifth Cork groat of the readeption of Henry VI – Oisín Mac Conamhna and Jack Pope
Very recently, one of us wrote about the four Irish groats then known from the second reign of Henry VI, all from Cork, in the political and numismatic context of the contemporary earldom of Desmond. Even more recently, the other of us has acquired a fifth newly-found specimen of this coinage. The purpose of this note is to record and describe this addition to the corpus.
