Canadians celebrate it. Indigenous people curse its memory. Americans forgot about it. And the British, having burned down the White House, are just amused by it! The War of 1812 represented an inflection point in the history of North America, a multi-front war that tested the promise and wisdom of the adolescent American experiment. Though little more than a draw militarily, the survival of the United States represented a substantial victory for the new nation. The United States government celebrated their fortune with more official medal types for this three-year conflict than any other war, including the American Revolution. This lecture will examine the American military and naval medals issued during the War of 1812, British-issued commemorative and campaign medals related to the war, and medals that fit into the often-overlooked Anglo-native conflict that underscored the entire episode.

John Kraljevich is one of America’s leading professional numismatists widely consulted by institutions, private collectors and professional colleagues. A popular longtime instructor at the American Numismatic Association’s annual Summer Seminar, the ANA named John an Honorary Doctor of Numismatics in 2015, awarded him the Numismatist of the Year honour in 2016, and recognized his dedication to the hobby with the Glenn Smedley Award in 2011. As the cataloguer of some of the most legendary cabinets ever sold at auction, John’s research and writing has received the highest honours from the Numismatic Literary Guild and other organizations. John is an annual contributor to A Guide Book of United States Coins, and has contributed to many numismatic reference books. Among the institutions he has advised institutions are the Smithsonian, Colonial Williamsburg, the Massachusetts Historical Society and Monticello. 

This paper investigates the role of the prize medal as a visual reflection on, and a stimulus for the popularisation of agricultural improvement in Britain in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Through a comparative study of the prize medals housed in the British Museum’s Coins and Medals department it will investigate why medals became the dominant prize awarded by institutions ranging from the largest learned societies to the smallest farmers clubs during the period. It will explore how prizes were used to help consolidate existing patterns of landownership, cement associative bonds and help drive innovation during the so-called ‘Agricultural Revolution’, and will demonstrate how engravers and artists responded to the needs of local communities and societies in medallic design.

Liam Fitzgerald is a 4^th year PhD candidate working at Kings College, London,  in collaboration with the British Museum. His work focuses on the material culture of improvement in the modern period, with a specific emphasis on the prize medals housed in the British Museum’s Coins and Medals department.

In 2018 Richard was awarded an Art Fund New Collecting Award to build a collection of monetary objects related to conflict, revolution, dissent, war, and activism. This paper will introduce the project and current work on some of the new acquisitions through five case studies. Themes will include radicals of the 18th century, trench art of WWI and contemporary money art. 

Dr Richard Kelleher is curator of medieval and modern coins at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. He is currently working on Medieval European Coinage 16: Crusader States and Latin East and the major exhibition project 'Currencies of Conflict and Dissent' which will open at The Fitzwilliam Museum in October 2022. He was awarded the BNS Blunt Prize in 2014 and the RNS Lhotka Prize in 2015.

The Great Debasement (1544-1560) is arguably the most traumatic event in English monetary history, certainly in the early modern period.  It has been the subject of much scholarly attention by numismatists and monetary historians, but aspects of its impact remain opaque. One of these is the currency of daily life throughout the period: what coins did English people have access to and how did they use them? Part of the problem here has been the paucity of relevant hoards. When David Symons published an unrecorded hoard of the debasement period in the BNJ in 1990, he included a catalogue of the known hoards,  just ten in number, several poorly recorded. Today, however, there are 26 hoards in the record and this paper will review these and explore how they affect our understanding of the currency of the debasement.   

Dr Barrie Cook has been curator of medieval and early modern coinage in the Department of Coins and Medals at the British Museum since 1985 and has published widely in his area of specialism and curated many numismatic exhibitions, as well as contributing to many more general exhibitions at the BM and elsewhere.  He was curator of the major BM exhibition Germany: memories of a nation and adapted it for subsequent revivals in Berlin and Copenhagen. He was also the curator for Neil MacGregor’s four Radio 4 series.  He has been editor of the British Numismatic Journal and secretary of the Royal Numismatic Society and is currently treasurer of the UK Numismatic Trust.  

This lecture examines the events on the19 April 1972 when a mechanical digger working in school grounds in Prestwich, a suburban town in the Metropolitan Borough of Bury, Greater Manchester, unearthed what was to be the largest recorded hoard of coins struck during the reign of Stephen. This paper revisits the events of the discovery of the hoard at the time and shortly afterwards, as well as providing an update on its contents looking at the types, moneyers and mints represented.   

Dr Bispham is an Honorary Fellow of The Royal Numismatic Society and Secretary and Trustee to The UK Numismatic Trust.  He is Past President of The British Association of Numismatic Societies (BANS). A member of the BNS, he was awarded The J .J. North medal for services to Numismatics in 2008. His numismatic interests are the coinages of Stephen and the anarchy and the base coinages of the Tudors. He has a doctorate in material science and is a lecturer and consultant on historic structures and timber frame buildings.

For the last thirty years of his life, Isaac Newton lived in London and ran the Royal Mint as well as the Royal Society. Formerly a reclusive scholar at Cambridge, now he moved in aristocratic circles, exerted political influence and became very rich. Although often antagonizing his staff as well as his colleagues, he oversaw the Great Recoinage of 1696, greatly improved efficiency and was responsible for placing Britain on the Gold Standard. He also benefitted financially and scientifically from the international trade in enslaved peoples.

Patricia Fara is an Emeritus Fellow of Clare College, where she was Senior Tutor for ten years. She originally read physics at Oxford, but was President of the British Society for the History of Science from 2016 to 2018, and is currently President of the Antiquarian Horological Society. As well as lecturing and teaching, she writes popular books and articles, and is a regular contributor to radio/TV programmes such as In our Time and Start the Week. She is especially interested in the Enlightenment period, with a particular emphasis on scientific imagery and women in science, both past and present. Her prize-winning Science: A Four Thousand Year History (2009) has been translated into nine languages, while recent publications include Life after Gravity: Isaac Newton’s London Career (2021) and A Lab of One’s Own: Science and Suffrage in The First World War (2018).

The demand for sovereigns internationally rose throughout the Second World War as millions were used during the conflict. With no new coins being struck and supplies in bank vaults running low, the hunger for more sovereigns was filled by the activities of counterfeiters. In order to combat this and protect its reputation, the Royal Mint began striking millions of sovereigns for sale into international markets. As part of an aggressive campaign to close down the counterfeiters, Treasury lawyers went on an offensive to bring those responsible to justice and ensure that the sovereign was recognised and protected under international law.  As sovereign sales continued, British authorities began to realise that not only could sovereigns sales help to combat counterfeiting but that they could also make large profits by selling the coin abroad.

Chris Barker read History at the University of York where he also completed an MA in Cultural Heritage Management in 2011. In 2012 he began working as Assistant Curator at the Royal Mint Museum. He regularly gives talks and has spoken on topics as varied as the Royal Mint during the First World War through to the introduction of the £1 coin. He continues to work at the Museum as Information and Research Manager and is currently researching the role of the sovereign in post-war Europe.

A joint BNS and RNS conference which will look at systems of currency from the ancient world to modern times and examine how they have come to periodically need to be reformed by the authorities, how reforms have been undertaken and identify examples where change has succeeded and where it has not. The one day conference will take place on Saturday 2 July 2022 in the Headley Lecture Theatre at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, starting at 9.30 am and closing around 4.45 pm,

Postponed due to the pandemic from July 2021, the day will comprise a series of papers by leading scholars that will explore why changes were undertaken, what worked and what did not.  It will look at the experience of currency reforms and renewal in the Ancient World, Europe and Britain c.500 - c.1650 and in the modern world after 1770.  In so doing the Conference will seek to identify some common factors behind the success or failure of coinage system reform and renewal.

This lecture explores why so many people gambled in eighteenth-century Britain. A major focus will be the lottery and its many derivatives which proved extraordinarily popular across Britain. Roy Porter once characterized the lottery as representing the nationalization of gambling in eighteenth-century England, although it was only one, admittedly prominent, feature of a very crowded gambling landscape. The question at the heart of this lecture will be what we can learn from gambling and the lottery in particular about the character of British society in this period and about aspirations to wealth and independence.

Bob Harris is Professor of British History at the University of Oxford, where he is a fellow of Worcester College. He has written widely on British politics, society and culture in the eighteenth century. His latest book, Gambling in Britain in the Long Eighteenth Century, will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2022.

From ancient times, Britain and Ireland have been very aware of their island character. But the seas around the British Isles have always connected as much as divided. People, objects and ideas - including coins and the concept of coinage - have all travelled to and fro. Indeed, coin finds offer important evidence for these movements and contacts. The series of  lectures will explore the contacts and influences on coin-use in Britain in the first millennium, taking an approach inspired by global history, which sees the sea as a space of connectivity. The first lecture will introduce the series and address numismatic connections with the Roman empire, and the subsequent influence of Rome, focusing in particular on the period up to c.675.