HENRY VIII SILVER COINS,
ST MARTIN'S FIELD, NEW ROMNEY
A total of seven silver coins of Henry VIII, consisting of four groats, two half groats and a penny, were recovered during excavations by CAT at St Martin’s Field in 2005.
The field is set back from and just to the north of the High Street, close to the centre of New Romney. One of the towns three parish churches, that of St Martin, is known to have stood here during the medieval period. By 1511 the church had fallen into a state of decay and it was eventually authorised for demolition on 27 May 1549 by the Archbishop of Canterbury – Thomas Cranmer.
Five of the silver coins were retrieved from dumped deposits likely associated with the demolition of the church.
Date: Tudor/early post-medieval (1544-1551)
OBJECT
Origin and discovery
An oratory dedicated to St Martin is mentioned lying beside the ‘Limen’ (an early water course) in an Anglo-Saxon charter of 741, and a church is thought to have been built in ‘Romney’ during the tenth century. However, whether this early church lay within what is now New Romney is questionable. No evidence exists for an Anglo-Saxon church and it seems likely based on recent data that St Martin’s was founded in the medieval period. The town contained two more parish churches, St Lawrence’s and St Nicholas’s. Today, of the three churches, only St Nicholas’s remains upstanding. The coins derive from a later period in the history of St Martin’s Church and it remains unclear as to how they ended up on the site. They most likely represent lost coinage, or perhaps they were part of charitable donations given to the church prior to its demise. The familiar depiction of Henry VIII is very clear on at least one of the coins, all of which were minted around 1544–1551. They were produced during the last years of Henry’s reign, at a time when his health and mobility were rapidly failing due to complications from an old jousting injury to his leg. Henry died in January 1547, aged 55. A few years earlier, in 1544, Henry had married his sixth and final wife – Catharine Parr. She died not long after Henry, in September 1548. Remains of St Martin’s Church lie hidden beneath the playing field, although parts of a possible churchyard boundary wall were identified during sewer trenching works between 2005 and 2007. A geophysical survey of the field in 2010 revealed features thought to represent structural elements of the church, including a potential tower foundation. The area excavated in 2005 revealed part of the graveyard associated with St Martin’s Church. Excavations here uncovered a total of 48 graves along with the burial of an articulated horse and an articulated pig, found buried within the area of the cemetery. The animal burials relate to a later period, after the churchyard had ceased to be used for human interment. The church was apparently in a bad state of repair in 1511 and not enough funds were raised to secure its future. On the 27 May 1549 Archbishop Cranmer authorised the destruction of St Martin’s. It was demolished with a mix of civic activity and private (illegal) acts including the loss of lead and some bell metal. It is likely that the town benefitted from the supply of building material from the church as well as material from other objects. It is thought that much of the church silver was melted down by a Rye goldsmith who made the town’s mace in 1551. Five of the coins were found in deposits of dumped material thought to relate to the demolition of the church in 1549 or buildings associated with the adjacent priory, as well as domestic and industrial material that may have originated form buildings fronting the High Street. The remaining two coins were recovered from a later post-medieval cobbled surface at the western end of the site and from the fill of a ditch that ran across the main excavation area. As part of the conservation process, all of the coins have undergone minimal cleaning which is why some encrusted soil particles remain. Cleaning methods to remove soil risk damage to the coins by potentially removing silver from their surfaces.
Use
An English groat is a defunct silver coin worth four-pence. The word ‘groat’ comes from the old French word, gros, which means large or great. Following circulation in England of a large French coin called the Gros Turnois, the English groat was first minted under Edward I in 1280, and it became the largest silver coin in England. Before this time only pennies and halfpennies were in circulation. The groat remained the largest silver coin in circulation until Henry VII introduced the testoon shilling at the beginning of the sixteenth century. In the UK, the groat stopped being minted in 1856, although colonial varieties were later produced. Groats are still issued in sets of Maundy Coinage – symbolic alms given by the British monarch to elderly recipients at Easter.
ARCHIVE
Current Location
Canterbury Archaeological Trust archives.
A report on CAT's archaeological investigations at New Romney (Occasional Paper no. 12) is available here:
https://www.canterburytrust.co.uk/occasional-papers
Catalogue Entry
Site code: NRSM EX 05
SF9 Silver coin (context 43), Henry VIII, half groat, posthumous issue 1547–51, York mint, North 1882, 1gm. From context 43 – fill of pit/post-hole late medieval. One of a pair of post-holes on both sides of a boundary ditch. Ditch might have been lined by or marked by a series of posts. 13th–15th century date.
SF88 Silver coin (context 111), Henry VIII, groat, posthumous issue 1547–51, bust 6, no initial marks, York mint, North 1876, 2gm. From context 111 – fill of ditch 102, early post-medieval. 16th century date.
SF245a (context 298) Silver coin, Henry VIII, groat, 3rd coinage 1544-47, bust 3, initial mark both sides, Tower mint, North 1844, 1gm.
SF245b (context 298) Silver coin, Henry VIII, 1d, penny, posthumous issue 1547-51, no initial mark, Tower mint, North 1883, 1gm.
SF245c (context 298) Silver coin, Henry VIII, groat, 3rd coinage 1545-47, Bust 2, No initial mark, Southwark mint, North 1845, 1gm.
SF249 (context 298) Silver coin, Henry VIII, half groat, third coinage 1544–47, no initial mark, Canterbury mint, North 1852, associated with SF249, 0.5gm.
SF250 (context 298) Silver coin, Henry VIII, groat, third coinage 1544–47, bust 3, initial mark on both sides, Tower mint, North 1844, associated with SF245, 3gm.
All five coins were found in context 298 – series of dumped deposits located in the southern spur of the site, seemingly comprised of demolition material intermixed with pockets of humic soils, natural gravels and sands. This material has been associated with the demolition of the church, however it may relate to the demolition of a structure in this area, as represented by a wall beneath this deposit. 16th–17th century date.
