A Fourteenth-Century Coin-Find from County Cavan by Michael Dolley & Colm Gallagher
The following article also provides an interesting glimpse of life, here locally, approximately 300 years before the Ulster Plantation. The coins were found by a woman setting potatoes. There was very little evidence of wear on the coins despite the fact that they not in a container. From Breifne Journal (1968) Pages 387 - 389
Through the kindness of Dr William O'Sullivan, M.R.I.A., the retiring Keeper of the Art & Industrial Division of the National Museum of Ireland, we are able here to put on record a small find of fourteenth-century English silver coins which came to light a whole generation ago. The seven coins, all of them pre-Treaty groats and half-groats of Edward III, were found by a woman setting potatoes in a field at a place called Kilnaglare in the townland of Cloverhill in Annagh parish, barony of Tullygarvey, Co. Cavan. A diligent search of the spot failed to produce more coins, and there was no trace of a container or of any associated material. In October 1935 the Irish Antiquities Division of the National Museum purchased the seven coins, and in June 1951, as part of a policy of rationalization, they were transferred to the Art & Industrial Division, which includes the Royal Irish Academy's coin-cabinet. Kilnaglare, it may be added, lies some three miles southeast by east of Belturbet, and some seven miles almost due north of Cavan town.
The seven coins may be listed as follows:-
ENGLAND
EDWARD III
Fourth ('pre-Treaty') Coinage, 1351-1361
Groats
MINT OF LONDON
1. Lawrence class C, North 1147 65 grains (4.21 g.)
Top arches fleured, D.G. : no stops in reverse legend, London civitas.
2. Lawrence class E, North 1163 65 grains (4.21 g.)
Top arches unfleured: no stops in reverse legend, civitas London.
MINT OF YORK
3. Lawrence class E, North 1164 55 grains (3.56 g.)
Top arches unfleured: Eboraci civitas
Half Groats
MINT OF LONDON
4. Lawrence class C, North 1148 32 grains (2.07 g.) - chipped.
(Fr)anci : London civitas.
5. Lawrence class C, North 1148 28 grains (1.81 g.) - chipped.
Franc : London civitas.
6. Lawrence class E, North 1165 30 grains (1.94 g.) - chipped.
Fraci : London civitas
7. Lawrence class Ga, North 1201 32 grains (2.07 g.)
Franc and annulet below bust: annulet in second heraldic quarter and civitas London.
The references are to the standard classification of the series worked out by the late L. A. Lawrence in his papers “The Coinage of Edward III from 1351” published in the Numismatic Chronicle for 1916, 1929, 1932 and 1933, and subsequently brought together into one volume, and to the most convenient general text-book, J. J. North's English Hammered Coinage (Vol. II, London, 1960). W. J. W.Potter has also taken account of two papers with the same title as Lawrence’s, which appeared in the Numismatic Chronicle for 1960 and 1962. Weights are to the nearest grain.
The damage to the half-groats appears to be entirely accidental, and the pieces generally evidence very little wear, the condition of the half-groat of Lawrence class Ga being virtually pristine. Only the York groat would seem to exhibit traces of deliberate clipping. It cannot well be doubted, then, that the coins were brought into Ireland and lost within a matter of years – the bracket of their striking extends over a period of not more than a quinquennium, and the oldest pieces could scarcely have been current for as much as a decade at the time of their loss. Significant in the context of a hoard from Breffny of this date must be the total absence of pence, English or Anglo-Irish, from the period after 1279. Against this background we are probably justified in suggesting that the hoard was lost not all that number of months after the import into Ireland of the latest coin. The piece in question is the London half-groat of Lawrence class Ga, and it is difficult to put its striking much later than 1356. It seems very plausible that the coins were brought into Ireland either under Rokeby on the occasion of his reappointment in the autumn of that year, or under his successor, St. Amand, who arrived in the late autumn of 1357. Both men, of course, belonged to the class of the “English by birth”. That the coins are to be associated with the advent of the celebrated Lionel of Clarence in the early autumn of 1361 may seem unlikely in view of the absence of the not all that uncommon coins of Lawrence classed Gb – Gh, but is not impossible. All in all, though, the evidence does favour the view that the English coins of Lawrence classes Gb Gh, but is not impossible. All in cealed – or lost – before rather than after the Treaty of Brétigny, and it may be thought that a provisional date of deposition c. 1360 is one unlikely seriously to mislead. In the light of the Breffny provenance, too, a certain significance must attach to the circumstances that the coins are so little clipped. Not many more decades were to elapse and “O'Reilly's country” was to be the centre of a flourishing traffic in fabrications made possible only by the unparalleled degree of clipping of the English groat and half-groat which circulated freely over the mearing in Co. Meath.
Possessors of annotated copies of the Inventory of British Coin Hoards (London, 1956) will doubtless wish to take a note of this find which is one quite unusual in an Irish context, and to facilitate this there is offered the following summary in a slightly modified Inventory format:-
CLOVERHILL, Annagh, Co. Cavan Spring 1935 (?)
7 AR English Deposit : c. 1360
Edward III : coinage of 1351-1361 – London : Groats, Lawrence gp, C 1; gp. E, 1. Half-groats, Lawrence gp. C, 2: gp. E, l; gp. Ga, 1, York ; Groat, Lawrence gp, E, 1
M. Dolley & C. Gallagher, Breifne, 111, 11 (1968), pp. 386-8.
Disposition, National Museum of Ireland. The coins were found in a field at a spot called Kilnaglare. There was no container.