Coins and Covenanters: Coin Hoards and Mapping the Civil Wars in Yorkshire

By Tristan Griffin, British Numismatic Society Intern

Image below: Map of Yorkshire with hoards dated to 1641-3.

For the years 1641-1643 the datable coin hoards are concentrated in the textile towns of the west riding, Bingley, Crigglestone and Denby. When the war began in late summer of 1642, this area was under the domination of the parliamentarian Fairfax lords of Denton Hall.

Through a combination of their traditional overlordship of the region and a similar religious outlook, ‘hotter’ Protestantism or puritanism, they gained widespread support across the region. This resulted in fighting and raiding, as the dalesmen and their lords, who overwhelmingly rose for the king, fought them for control of the west riding.

The situation became much worse for the Farifaxes in January 1643, when Lord Newcastle invaded the Yorkshire from the North-East with an army over 8,000 strong to rescue the beleaguered Yorkshire royalists. Despite a few surprising victories, the Fairfax army was eventually crushed by the royalists at the battle of Adwalton moor near Leeds, and the parliamentarians forced to retreat to hull.

The large number of coin hoards in this region dated to this year shows that, in response to this violence, people chose to conceal their wealth rather than see it stolen by one of the marauding armies.

Image below: Map of Yorkshire with hoards dated to 1644.

People did the same during 1644, when the army of the covenant invaded Yorkshire, marching down the great north road to York. The presbetyrian covenanters had been in control of much of Scotland for the past six years, and had allied with the parliamentarians-hoping to achieve their goal of uniting all of Britain under presbytery.

They marched through a region that had been solidly royalist for the entire war, with a mandate to punish any royalist ‘malignants’ with the confiscation, or even burning, of property. Faced with this threat the inhabitants of the vale of Mobray behaved exactly like their parliamentarian cousins in the west riding.

They dug a hole in the ground, and put their money in it.

Images: below left, Gold ‘Unite’ (called that because it was originally one of the first coin types to bear the coat of arms of a united Britain) of Charles I, found at Breckenbrough (YORYM: 1993.711.20-2). Below right, Receipt from Breckenbrough Hoard (YORYM: 1993.711.2-2).

In one case however, they put in rather more than that. Part of our civil war coin collection is the entire Breckenbrough hoard-over a thousand gold and silver coins deposited in 1644. However, in addition to all these coins there are also a pair of receipts buried with them that, incredibly, have survived and can be read today.

They are actually receipts for cheese, paid for by the royalist army headquarters in York. While the supply of foodstuffs to the royalist soldiers seems innocent enough, they represented dangerously incriminating records if discovered by the covenanters.

As such they, and the wealth that could have been confiscated if they were discovered, were buried: kept hidden, in case parliament won, but recoverable, in case the royalists won and needed proof of loyalty.

Read Tristan’s previous blog here: Coins and Cavaliers: The Civil War Coin Collection at the Yorkshire Museum.