Prof Rory Naismith

Professor of Early Medieval English History

Fellow of Corpus Christi College

Departmental and College Responsibilities

ASNC Tripos, Part I

  • England before the Norman Conquest (Paper 1)

ASNC Tripos, Part II

  • The Anglo-Saxon Chancery (Paper 1)

Supervision of graduate students in the history of early medieval England.

Academic Interests

The history of early medieval England and its neighbours; monetary history; social and economic developments; material culture; numismatics; documentary culture; comparative history.

  • General Editor and Secretary, Sylloge of Coins of the British Isles (British Academy)
  • General Editor, Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe (Brepols)
  • Editorial Board, Anglo-Saxon England (CUP)
  • Editorial Board, Cambridge Elements: the Anglo-Saxon World (CUP)
  • Committee Member, Anglo-Saxon Charters (British Academy)
  • Advisory Board Member (2019-), International Society of Anglo-Saxonists
  • Director (2015-18) and Committee Member (2018-), British Numismatic Society
  • AHRC Leadership Fellow (2020-1), on 'Foundations of Gold and Silver'
  • Fellow, Royal Historical Society

Selected Publications

Monographs

  • Citadel of the Saxons: the Rise of Early London (London: I.B. Tauris, 2018)
  • Medieval European Coinage, with a Catalogue of the Coins in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. 8: Britain and Ireland c. 400–1066 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017)
  • (with F. Tinti) The Forum Hoard of Anglo-Saxon Coins/Il ripostiglio dell’Atrium Vestae nel Foro Romano, Bollettino di numismatica 55–6 (Rome: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, 2016)
  • Sylloge of Coins of the British Isles, vol. 67. British Museum: Anglo-Saxon Coins II: Southern English Coinage from Offa to Alfred, c. 760–c. 880 (London: British Museum Press, 2016)
  • Money and Power in Anglo-Saxon England: the Southern English Kingdoms 757–865, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, 4th series, 80 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012)
  • The Coinage of Southern England 796–865, British Numismatic Society Special Publication 8, 2 vols. (London: Spink, 2011)

Edited volumes

  • A Cultural History of Money in the Medieval Age (London: Bloomsbury, 2019)

  • Decoding Medieval Sources: Money and Coinage (Leiden: Brill, 2018)

  • (with D. Woodman) Writing, Kingship and Power in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017)
  • (with M. Allen and E. Screen) Early Medieval Monetary History: Studies in Memory of Mark Blackburn, Studies in Early Medieval Britain (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014)

Selected journal articles and book chapters

  • ‘The Laws of London? “IV Æthelred” in Context’, The London Journal 44 (2019), 1–16
  • (with F. Tinti) ‘The Origins of Peter's Pence’, English Historical Review 134 (2019), 521–52
  • ‘The Ely Memoranda and the Economy of the Late Anglo-Saxon Fenland’, Anglo-Saxon England 45 (2017), 333–77
  • ‘The Forum Hoard and Beyond: Money, Gift and Religion in the Early Middle Ages’, Viator 47 (2016), 35–55
  • ‘The Land Market and Anglo-Saxon Society’, Historical Research 89 (2016), 19–41
  • ‘The Coinage of Æthelred II: a New Evaluation’, English Studies 97 (2016), 117–39
  • ‘The Social Significance of Monetization in the Early Middle Ages’, Past & Present 223 (May 2014), 3–39
  • ‘Gold Coinage and its Use in the Post-Roman West’, Speculum 89 (2014), 273–306
  • ‘London and its Mint, c. 880–1066: a Preliminary Survey’, British Numismatic Journal 83 (2013), 44–74
  • ‘Payments for Land and Privilege in Anglo-Saxon England’, Anglo-Saxon England 41 (2013 for 2012), 277–342
  • ‘The English Monetary Economy c. 973–1100: the Evidence of Single-Finds’, Economic History Review 66 (2013), 198–225
  • ‘Kings, Crisis and Coinage Reforms in the Mid-Eighth Century’, Early Medieval Europe 20 (2012), 291–332
  • (with S. Keynes) ‘The Agnus Dei Pennies of King Æthelred the Unready’, Anglo-Saxon England 40 (2012), 175–223
  • ‘The Origins of the Line of Egbert, King of the West Saxons 802–39’, English Historical Review 126 (2011), 1–16
  • ‘The Coinage of Offa Revisited’, British Numismatic Journal 80 (2010), 76–106
  • ‘Real and Metaphorical Libraries in the Epitomae and Epistolae of Virgil the Grammarian’, Journal of Medieval Latin 19 (2009), 148–72
  • ‘Antiquity, Authority and Religion in the Epitomae and Epistolae of Virgilius Maro Grammaticus’, Peritia 20 (2008), 59–85
  • ‘Islamic Coins from Early Medieval England’, Numismatic Chronicle 165 (2005), 193–222
  • ‘Currency, Conversion and the Landscape of Power in the Early Middle Ages’, in The Introduction of Christianity into the Early Medieval Insular World, ed. R. Flechner and M. Ní Mhaonaigh, Converting the Isles I (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), pp. 281–304
  • ‘The Economy of Beowulf’, in Old English Philology: Studies in Honor of R. D. Fulk, ed. L. Neidorf, R. D. Pascual and T. Shippey (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2016), pp. 371–91
  • ‘H. M. Chadwick and the Anglo-Saxon Monetary System’, in The Life and Writings of Hector Munro Chadwick, ed. M. Lapidge, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 69/70 (Aberystwyth: Department of Welsh, 2015), pp. 143–56
  • ‘Turpe lucrum? Wealth, Money and Coinage in the Millennial Church’, in Money and the Church in Medieval Europe, 1000–1200: Practice, Morality and Thought, ed. G. M. Gasper and S. Gullbekk (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), pp. 17–37
  • ‘Prelude to Reform: Tenth-Century English Coinage in Perspective’, in Early Medieval Monetary History: Studies in Memory of Mark Blackburn, ed. M. Allen, R. Naismith and E. Screen (Farnham: Aldershot, 2014), pp. 39–83
  • ‘Peter’s Pence and Before: Numismatic Links between Anglo-Saxon England and Rome’, in England and Rome in the Early Middle Ages, ed. F. Tinti (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), pp. 217–53