S.1279, PERERIC Var, Lincoln. -

Stephen (1135-1154), ‘PERERIC’ variants, Penny, Cross Moline type [BMC I], reading PERERIC M, Lincoln, Siward, [SI]PARD : ON : N[ICO], 1.22g/12h (Allen, BNJ 2012, p.112; Mack 46b, this coin; Mossop 13-14, and pl. lxxxvii, SCBI Lincoln 950 and Williams 716, same dies; BMC –; N 928; S 1279). 

Provenance: The North Yorkshire Moors Collection of British Coins (Marvin Lessen), from the South Kyme (Lincolnshire) Hoard, G.C. Drabble Collection, Part II, 13-14 December 1943, lot 999; bt Baldwin December 1981.

The late Antony Gunstone, in SCBI 27, confused the provenance of Sylloge 950 with that of the present coin. The coin in Lincoln Museum, described as part of the Hill bequest of 1974, is correctly Drabble 722, where it was offered without further provenance and it is demonstrably not one of the six PERERIC M coins listed by Lawrence from South Kyme; it passed to Mossop (not Hill) and thence, by assumption, into Lincoln Museum (Mack 46f). The coins acquired by Hill at the first Lockett sale in 1955 (SCBI p.xxiv) cannot have included Sylloge 950, as the only example of this moneyer and mint in the Lockett collection (ex Rashleigh 634 and Carlyon-Britton 1509) was not sold until the third Lockett English dispersal in 1958 (lot 2971), when it was acquired for the British Museum (Mack 46c).

The late Marion Archibald favoured the equation of the PERERIC M legend with a form of the Anglo-Norman Emperereiz (empress) followed by the initial M (Matilda), despite the fact that some mint towns issuing PERERIC coins were not under the control of Matilda; she postulated that mints who had ordered obverse dies from the Fitz Otto workshop after William Fitz Otto had personally declared for Matilda were thus inscribed and issued in the summer of 1141 (BNJ 1991, pp.15-16).