Coin Finds and the English Money Supply, c. 973–1544

Abstract

One of Nicholas Mayhew’s greatest achievements has been his use of the various formulations of the Fisher Equation to investigate the connections between money supply, prices, wages and national income in England between the Domesday Book survey in 1086 and 1750 (Mayhew, 1995a; 1995b; 2004; 2013b, pp. 12–14, 35–8). In an important paper published in 1995 he analysed single finds of coins (as distinct from coin hoards), comparing them with estimates of the size of currency and GDP (Mayhew, 1995a, pp. 62–5). Mayhew brought together figures from Stuart Rigold’s pioneering study of finds from a hundred sites in England and Wales (Rigold, 1977), Michael Metcalf’s data for coins of c. 973–c. 1090 from various sources (Metcalf, 1980, pp. 22–31, 36–47), finds of c. 973–1180 published in the British Numismatic Journal in the 1980s, and coins of 1180–1544 Mayhew had himself recorded at the Ashmolean Museum. In 1997 Christopher Dyer analysed new data for finds of 1180–1544 from excavations of rural settlement sites and from the Warwickshire Sites and Monuments Record (Dyer, 1997, pp. 31–40), and Mayhew has revisited the subject in the light of finds recorded at the Ashmolean between 1992 and 2000 (Mayhew, 2002, pp. 18–21).