121 



Find of Groats at Embleton, in Northumberland, ranging 

 from Edward III. to Edward IV. By W. H. Dyer 



LoNGSTAFFE. 



In the York museum a drawer contains the coins found 

 in the tomb of Archbishop Scrope, a local traitor, martyr, 

 and saint, " or some or one of them," as lawyers say. He 

 was beheaded in 1405, and those coins, in cotemporaneous or 

 subsequent circulation, range back to the reign of Edward I. 

 That same Edward died about a century previously, to wit, 

 in 1307. His coins are much worn, as might be expected, 

 but indeed none of the pieces in that singular find are in 

 good condition. 



Another little bit of evidence as to the duration and state 

 of circulation has just occurred. 



Embleton churchyard, on its eastern side, has some three 

 feet of soil on a bed of rock. At two feet from the surface, in 

 that part of the cemetery, on a bed of sand, surrounded by 

 three stones and hard soil, three rows of groats, and groats 

 only, set edge-up, have been discovered. There were two 

 rows at the bottom, and there was one row above them. The 

 coins number 94. There is not what a London collector, or 

 dealer, would call a good coin, among them. But to numis- 

 matists, this little find, as a find, is not devoid of interest. 



The coins commence with the common types of Edward 

 III.'s groats, and end with No. 6 of Hawkins's types of 

 Edward IV. 's light groats. Edward III. commenced to coin 

 groats in 1351. Edward IV. reduced the weight of the coin- 

 age in 1464. So that, as we saw by the Scrope tomb, the 

 hammered coins of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries 

 continued in use for upwards of a century. 



Let me say something in this place about each end of the 

 series. Edward III.'s groats are clipped and rubbed enough, 

 and, on the whole, the impressions of Henry VI. 's are 

 sharpest. Yet, with all the clipping, which could hardly be 

 dishonest when it was only intended to bring ancient coins 

 to the weight of the reduced ones of later days ; — with all 

 the clipping, some of the groats of Edward III. outweigh many 

 of those of the Henries, and are within a couple of grains of 

 the heaviest one of Edward IV. ; while the last coin of the 

 deposit, Hawkins's No. 6, as aforesaid, is in such a plight 

 that I can positively balance some of my half-groats of Edward 

 III. with it. It is, 1 think, the lightest of the whole lot. 



