Canute Penny, Quatrefoil type, Castle Gotha Mint, moneyer Wulmaer

Canute (1016-35), silver quatrefoil Penny (c.1017-23), Gothabyrig or Oldaport Mint, Moneyer Wulfmaer, crowned and draped bust left within quatrefoil, legend surrounding commences at top, +CNVT REX ANGLORV, rev. pellet at centre of voided long cross, over quatrefoil with pellet cusps, legend surrounding, +PVLFMAER O GOÐ, weight 0.81g (SCBI 13 [Copenhagen], 1063; cf Taunton B dies, p.231, 'Regional die production in Cnut's Quatrefoil issue' Blackburn and Lyon; N.781; S.1157). Toned, reverse legends showing a slight distortion, few peckmarks, otherwise pleasing very fine set out on good metal with an imposing bust, extremely rare.

The Latin legends translate as "Canute King of the English" on obverse and on the reverse "Wulfmaer of Gothabyrig."

This Quatrefoil type coin is struck in the Taunton B style dies - see Blackburn and Lyon article 'Regional die production in Cnut's Quatrefoil issue' pp 231-32. Anglo Saxon Monetary History, 1986. The debate over where this mint signature relates to geographically has continued for about the last 175 years with varying towns suggested until coin die evidence studied by Michael Dolley and F. Elmore-Jones in the 1955 British Numismatic Journal suggested Castle Gotha near St Austell in Cornwall as a best fit solution. However, there are archaeological and philological arguments why this place name is not the right location and Elmore-Jones felt Somerset and the western edge of Wessex may have been a more appropriate place, as perhaps evidenced by the coin being of the Taunton style.

Professor Rory Naismith has argued recently and more convincingly in the 2020 British Numismatic Journal (the late Saxon Mint place at Geodaburh p.96 to p.102) that Gotha is more likely a place name for Oldaport in south-western Devon where there is physical evidence on a triangular parcel of land by the River Erme of a Saxon fort, where the stone has been scientifically dated to the right period. Oldaport was obviously a defensive site and one of only eight thus far discovered in England with such stone wall defences. It then seems to have faded into obscurity from the time immediately after the Norman invasion and not mentioned again until the late fourteenth century as "La Yoldeport". The name today being suggestive of age and former importance as an old port or old fort, it may well have had another earlier saxon name now lost to obscurity more akin to the mint signature. Oldaport now stands as the most likely candidate for the Gothabyrig mint signature. Such coins remain extremely rare and we note that this coin was not listed in Prof. Naismith's corpus of known examples. There are four variations of the mint reading in Canute's quatrefoil type of which this reading GOÐ is the shortest and with only one example quoted in the SCBI entry noted in the cataloguing above. Therefore this quatrefoil type of Canute with this moneyer and mint reading is one of the rarest Castle Gotha reverses.

The known coins of this mint reading range in time from the long cross type of Aethelred II around the end of the first Millennium until Fleur de list type Harold I and Harthacnut arm and sceptre, a forty plus year life with four moneyer names known, Wulfmaer, Carla, Leofmaer and Aelfweard with a total maximum population as listed of 34 coins.