This book records, illustrates, and discusses the context of more than 1,000 coins from the Anglo-Saxon period, assembled by the author during 60 years of scholarly research and deposited by him in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, on lifetime loan. The composition of the collection reflects this research and is therefore particularly strong in the so-called sceattas and stycas of the kingdom of Northumbria, and also in silver pennies of Edward the Elder from the early 10th century, as well as the issues of Æthelred II and Cnut which immediately preceded and followed the former's death in 1016. A textual chapter discusses and points to a resolution of the discrepancy in 9th-century Northumbrian chronology as presented by Norman historians and from analysis of the coinage. A later chapter reviews the evidence of documents, hoards and the analytical study of the surviving coinage for the dates and durations of its periodic renewal in the fifty years after its reform by Edgar c.973.
