There are only two gold coins of Wulfric of Mercia in existence
anywhere. One of them is in the British Museum, and the other one is in
my possession.
The most terrible incident in the whole course of my career is
intimately connected with my first discovery of that gold Wulfric. It is
not too much to say that my entire life has been deeply coloured by it,
and I shall make no apology therefore for narrating the story in some
little detail. I was stopping down at Lichfield for my summer holiday in
July, 1879, when I happened one day accidentally to meet an old
ploughman who told me he had got a lot of coins at home that he had
ploughed up on what he called the "field of battle," a place I had
already recognized as the site of the Mercian kings' wooden palace.
I went home with him at once in high glee, for I have been a collector
of old English gold and silver coinage for several years, and I was in
hopes that my friendly ploughman's find might contain something good in
the way of Anglo-Saxon pennies or shillings, considering the very
promising place in which he had unearthed it.
As it turned out, I was not mistaken. The little hoard, concealed within
a rude piece of Anglo-Saxon pottery (now No. 127 in case LIX. at the
South Kensington Museum), comprised a large number of common Frankish
Merovingian coins (I beg Mr. Freeman's pardon for not calling them
Merwings), together with two or three Kentish pennies of some rarity
from the mints of Ethelbert at Canterbury and Dover. Amongst these minor
treasures, however, my eye at once fell upon a single gold piece,
obviously imitated from the imperial Roman aureus of the pretender
Carausius, which I saw immediately must be an almost unique bit of money
of the very greatest numismatic interest. I took it up and examined it
carefully. A minute's inspection fully satisfied me that it was indeed a
genuine mintage of Wulfric of Mercia, the like of which I had never
before to my knowledge set eyes upon.
I immediately offered the old man five pounds down for the whole
collection. He closed with the offer forthwith in the most contented
fashion, and I bought them and paid for them all upon the spot without
further parley.
When I got back to my lodgings that evening I could do nothing but look
at my gold Wulfric. I was charmed and delighted at the actual possession
of so great a treasure, and was burning to take it up at once to the
British Museum to see whether even in the national collection they had
got another like it. So being by nature of an enthusiastic and impulsive
disposition, I determined to go up to town the very next day, and try to
track down the history of my Wulfric. "It'll be a good opportunity," I
said to myself, "to kill two birds with one stone. Emily's people
haven't gone out of town yet. I can call there in the morning, arrange
to go to the theatre with them at night, and then drive at once to the
Museum and see how much my find is worth."
Next morning I was off to town by an early train, and before one o'clock
I had got to Emily's.
"Why, Harold," she cried, running down to meet me and kiss me in the
passage (for she had seen me get out of my hansom from the drawing-room
window), "how on earth is it that you're up in town to-day? I thought
you were down at Lichfield still with your Oxford reading party."
"So I am," I answered, "officially at Lichfield; but I've come up to-day
partly to see you, and partly on a piece of business about a new coin
I've just got hold of."
"A coin!" Emily answered, pretending to pout. "Me and a coin! That's how
you link us together mentally, is it? I declare, Harold, I shall be
getting jealous of those coins of yours some day, I'm certain. You can't
even come up to see me for a day, it seems, unless you've got some
matter of a coin as well to bring you to London. Moral: never get
engaged to a man with a fancy for collecting coins and medals."
"Oh, but this is really such a beauty, Emily," I cried enthusiastically.
"Just look at it, now. Isn't it lovely? Do you notice the
inscription--'Wulfric Rex!' I've never yet seen one anywhere else at all
like it."
Emily took it in her hands carelessly. "I don't see any points about
that coin in particular," she answered in her bantering fashion, "more
than about any other old coin that you'd pick up anywhere."
That was all we said then about the matter. Subsequent events engrained
the very words of that short conversation into the inmost substance of
my brain with indelible fidelity. I shall never forget them to my dying
moment.
I stopped about an hour altogether at Emily's, had lunch, and arranged
that she and her mother should accompany me that evening to the Lyceum.
Then I drove off to the British Museum, and asked for leave to examine
the Anglo-Saxon coins of the Mercian period.
The superintendent, who knew me well enough by sight and repute as a
responsible amateur collector, readily gave me permission to look at a
drawerful of the earliest Mercian gold and silver coinage. I had brought
one or two numismatic books with me, and I sat down to have a good look
at those delightful cases.
After thoroughly examining the entire series and the documentary
evidence, I came to the conclusion that there was just one other gold
Wulfric in existence besides the one I kept in my pocket, and that was
the beautiful and well-preserved example in the case before me. It was
described in the last edition of Sir Theophilus Wraxton's "Northumbrian
and Mercian Numismatist" as an absolutely unique gold coin of Wulfric of
Mercia, in imitation of the well-known aureus of the false emperor
Carausius. I turned to the catalogue to see the price at which it had
been purchased by the nation. To my intense surprise I saw it entered at
a hundred and fifty pounds.