Page:Devon & Cornwall Notes & Queries.djvu/93

 6o Devon Notes and Querus tenementum nuper Ricardi Tykerygge exparte occidental! et tenementum nuper Willelmi Prynce exparte orientali in latitudine et in iongitudine a dicto vico in parte boriali usque ad tenementum predict! Willelmi Prynce exparte australi/* John Salter died on 15th January, 1449-50. W.E.M. 38. Barnstaple, a Mint town in Anglo-Saxon and Early Norman Times. — Until quite recently Anglo-Saxon coins with the mint marks Bear, Bard, Bearda have been assigned to Bardney, Lincolnshire, but now the most eminent numis- matic authorities concur in the opinion that they should be assigned to Barnstaple. The writer, who suggested Bardney was Bror Emil Hildebrand, who would not be acquainted with the details of English topography. The facts which have led to the substitution of Barnstaple for Bardney, with respect to the mint place of these coins are as follows : — Bardney was only the site of a monastery of high repute, situated moreover within ten miles of Lincoln, where a Saxon mint existed at a very early period, which issued a large number of coins during the reigns of iEthelred II, Canute, Harold, and Edward the Confessor, this fact rendering it improbable that another mint existed in such close proximity as Bardney would have been. Furthermore, Bardney was not a place where a mint would be likely to exist in the days referred to, because historians tell us that in 870, the Danes under Ingwarand Hubba, burnt the edifice and murdered the monks, and in 909 the remains of Oswald, King of the Northumbrians, which had been interred first at Bardney, were removed to Gloucester, in consequence, it may be assumed, of the ruined condition of the monastery, from which it was not restored until it was rebuilt by Gilbert de Gaunt, after the Norman Conquest. The circumstance which first led to Barnstaple being fixed on as the site of the mint, was an eleventh century endorsement, where mention is made of the burh-witan, at Beardastapol, proving the existence of Barnstaple as a borough at that date and therefore a likely place for a mint, to which it may be added, that on one of the Canute's coins the minting place Beardas may well stand for Beardastapol, but cannot be assigned to Beardinig. From these aud other facts, the conclusion arrived at by numismatists, has been expressed as follows, by Sir John Evans, K.C.B., President of