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

  • Saints and Farmers: Economy and Society c. 950-1050 (Paper 1)
  • Islands of the Ocean: Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia and the Wider World (Paper 4)

Supervision of graduate students in the history of early medieval England, and on comparative topics.

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, Early Medieval England and its Neighbours (CUP)
  • Editorial Board, Cambridge Elements: England in the Early Medieval 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

  • Offa, King of the Mercians (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2026).
  • Making Money in the Early Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023).
  • Early Medieval Britain 500–1000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).
  • 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

  • Small Change: New Perspectives on Money in the Early Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2025).
  • (with M. Allen and H. Pagan) Interpreting Early Medieval Coinage: Studies in Memory of Stewart Lyon, British Numismatic Society Special Publication 15 (London: Spink, 2022).
  • (with M. Ní Mhaonaigh and E. A. Rowe) Writing Battles: New Perspectives on Warfare and Memory in Medieval Europe (London: Bloomsbury, 2020).

  • 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

  • ‘Economic Change, Silver, and the Plague of 664–687 in England’, Past and Present (early view January 2025), https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtae048
  • ‘The Anglo-Saxons: Myth and History’, Early Medieval England and its Neighbours 1 (2024), 1–43.
  • (with J. Kershaw, S. Merkel and P. D’Imporzano) ‘Byzantine Plate and Frankish Mines: the Provenance of Silver in North-West European Coinage during the Long Eighth Century (c. 660–820)’, Antiquity 98 (2024), 502–17.
  • (with B. Guy) ‘Lancaut: an Early Eleventh-Century Mint-Place on the River Wye’, British Numismatic Journal 93 (2023), 95–105.
  • ‘The Late Anglo-Saxon Mint-Place Derne’, British Numismatic Journal 93 (2023), 107–13.
  • ‘The Moneyers and Domesday Book’, Anglo-Norman Studies 45 (2023), 181–274.
  • ‘Bige Habban: an Introduction to Money, Trade and Cross-Border Traffic’, Offa’s Dyke Journal 4 (2022), 16–35.
  • ‘Lydford: a New Mint-Place for Æthelstan’, British Numismatic Journal 91 (2021), 190–2.
  • ‘A New Moneyer for Cynethryth, Queen of the Mercians’, British Numismatic Journal 91 (2021), 183–5.
  • (with R. Ambrose) ‘“Eadwold on Eastcheap, London”: a Street-Name on a Late Anglo-Saxon Penny’, British Numismatic Journal 90 (2020), 204–11.
  • ‘Gilds, States and Societies in the Early Middle Ages’, Early Medieval Europe 28 (2020), 627–62.
  • ‘The Late Anglo-Saxon Mint-Place at Geoðaburh’, British Numismatic Journal 90 (2020), 95–104.
  • ‘Lidanport: a New Mint-Place for Edgar’s Pre-Reform Coinage’, British Numismatic Journal 90 (2020), 199–201.
  • ‘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.

Selected contributions to edited volumes:

  • ‘Monastic Economies in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, in Cultivating the Earth, Nurturing the Body and Soul in Anglo-Saxon England: Daily Life in Early Medieval England, ed. C. Voth (Turnhout: Brepols, 2025), pp. 33–64.
  • ‘Money and Pilgrimage in Early Medieval Europe (c. 600–1100)’, in Le molte facce di una moneta. Denaro e materialità nella Storia: saggi in onore di Lucia Travaini, ed. M. Baldassari, B. Cook and S. Locatelli (Milan: Milano University Press, 2025), pp. 471–85.
  • ‘Viking Money and Colonisation in Ninth-Century England’, in Money, Coinage and Colonialism: Entangled Exchanges, ed. N. Myrberg Burström and F. Kemmers (London and New York: Routledge, 2025), pp. 15–31.
  • ‘One for All and All for One? Money and Standardization in the Early Middle Ages’, in Standardization in the Middle Ages, ed. L.C. Engh and K. M. Bliksrud Aavitsland (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2024), pp. 43–66.
  • (with W. MacKay) ‘An Imitative Dinar from Hunmanby, North Yorkshire’, in Interpreting Early Medieval Coinage: Studies in Memory of Stewart Lyon, ed. M. Allen, R. Naismith and H. Pagan (London: Spink, 2022), pp. 53–64.
  • (with N. Payne) ‘A Late-10th-Century Lead Object with a Coin Die Impression from Exeter’, in Interpreting Early Medieval Coinage: Studies in Memory of Stewart Lyon, ed. M. Allen, R. Naismith and H. Pagan (London: Spink, 2022), pp. 113–22.
  • ‘Currency and Conquest in the Eleventh Century’, in Conquests in Eleventh-Century England: 1016, 1066, ed. L. Ashe and E. J. Ward (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2020), pp. 85–98.
  • ‘Reading Money: an Introduction to Numismatic Inscriptions in Anglo-Saxon England’, in Anglo-Saxon Micro-Texts, ed. U. Lenke and L. Kornexl, Anglia Book Series 67 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020), pp. 13–27.
  • ‘Writing, Communication, and Currency: Dialogues between Coinage and Charters in Anglo-Saxon England’, in The Languages of Early Medieval Charters: Latin, Germanic Vernaculars, and the Written Word, ed. R. Gallagher, E. Roberts and F. Tinti (Leiden: Brill, 2020), pp. 488–521.
  • ‘Denarii mixti: Debasement and Rhetoric in the Early Middle Ages (5th–12th Centuries)’, in Debasement: Manipulation of Coin Standards in Pre-Modern Monetary Systems, ed. K. Butcher (Oxford: Oxbow, 2020), pp. 195–207.
  • ‘Mints, Moneyers and the Geography of Power in the Early Medieval West’, in Power and Place in Later Roman and Early Medieval Europe: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Governance and Civil Organization, ed. J. Carroll, A. Reynolds and B. Yorke, Proceedings of the British Academy 224 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), pp. 414–35.
  • ‘Money and the Issues of the Age: the Plurality of Money’, in A Cultural History of Money in the Medieval Age, ed. R. Naismith (London: Bloomsbury, 2019), pp. 125–50.
  • ‘Money and Society’, in Money and Coinage in the Middle Ages, ed. R. Naismith (Leiden: Brill, 2018), pp. 179–202.
  • ‘Pecuniary Profanities? Money, Christianity and Demonstrative Giving in the Early Middle Ages’, in Divina Moneta: Coins in Religion and Ritual, ed. N. M. Burström and G. T. Ingvardson (London: Routledge, 2018), pp. 142–59.
  • ‘The Historian and Anglo-Saxon Coinage: the Case of Late Anglo-Saxon England’, in Writing, Kingship and Power in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. R. Naismith and D. Woodman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), pp. 162–80.
  • ‘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.