Andrew Burnett’s monumental study of numismatics in early modern Britain is a huge achievement, providing a fundamental work of reference that will be of use not only to numismatists and antiquaries, but also for any who study humanism, and the intellectual development of a whole society.

Although collecting was above all a gentlemanly pursuit, some women (pp 1156–8), such as Henrietta Louisa, Countess of Pomfret (1698–1761), studied coins in Paris and Rome. Burnett notes others, such as Katherine Bridgeman, Mary or Ann Barrington, Elizabeth, Duchess of Hamilton, and Lady Anne Livingstone, Countess of Kilmarnock, although women in numismatics were nevertheless a minority. Nor was an interest in coins restricted to the upper classes. Tradesmen collector-scholars such as George Ballard, who lacked formal education, or York baker Samuel Smith are encountered too (pp 1158, 1161). Burnett also cites the ‘natural genius’ of tailor John Speed, who effectively invented coin illustration in England in 1600 (pp 231–43). The Essex Rector, Thomas Compton, regretted that ‘it seldom happens amongst us, that Medals have any other for their first Proprietors than Labourers or Ploughmen. When they fall into such hands, it is often very difficult as well as expensive to get them hence’. Compton had great faith that men of honour would offer a fair price, but the ignorant were so suspicious! Compton recognised that ‘many of the Illiterate have’ an interest in coins ‘in as great a Measure as the most Learned tho not with the same Degree of reason’. Burnett concludes that ‘collecting may have been more common at “lower” levels of society than we can easily document’ (pp 1161–2). Foreigners, however, were sometimes more knowledgeable (chs 31–2) and immigrants raised the knowledge of collectors in Britain, most notably Ezekiel Spanheim, who was praised by Edward Gibbon and celebrated by Burnett as ‘the greatest numismatist to have lived in early modern Britain’ (p 1162).

The work is superbly indexed (vol III) to facilitate searches for individuals, places, coin finds, coinages and dealers, in addition to a general index. This is important, since the arrangement of the material is sometimes discursive. The contents pages also provide a detailed summary guide to help the reader find their way around all three volumes. Thus, vol 1, in four essentially chronological parts, takes the story from the sixteenth century through the early seventeenth century with the beginnings of the royal collection, through the Civil War and Restoration and into the later parts of the century with the beginnings of the university collections. Vol II explores leading individual collectors and scholars into the eighteenth century, and part V describes the history of British national collections. Part VI offers a welcome conclusion, which usefully helps the reader to understand the shape of the wood, as well as the individual trees. Vol III contains abstracts from original sources and studies of specific topics and individuals; although many are famous independently of their interest in coins, such as Cuthbert Tunstall, Thomas More – who had the largest collection outside Italy at the time (p 1143) – and Archbishop Thomas Laud, the majority are less well known. Simonds D’Ewes, better known for his parliamentary diaries, also had a collection, exceeded only by those of Charles i and the University of Oxford. The scope of the whole project is ended with the gift of Sir Hans Sloane’s enormous collection as ‘the principal founding collection of the British Museum in 1753’ (p 1146).

Early numismatic interest in Britain was chiefly in classical (mostly Roman) coins, no doubt stimulated by finds of Roman coins. There seems to have been little scholarly interest in medieval coins found, although no doubt the bullion value of such coins was always appreciated, and monarchs were quick to assert their rights over finds of precious metal. James iv of Scotland rewarded a finder of treasure with enough cash to buy himself a cow in 1496. In 1534 the finders of a hoard from Cumbria were questioned and their names sent to Thomas Cromwell (p 1161). Burnett suggests parts of Henry viii’s collection, which Elizabeth later examined, may have derived from this hoard, and from the seizure of More’s collection at the time of his execution (p 1143). As in continental Europe, interest in classical coins blossomed in the Renaissance, which itself was perhaps stimulated by the arrival in the west of original classical texts brought after the fall of Constantinople in 1453.

Numismatics is essentially an auxiliary aid to more mainstream historical scholarship. Sir Thomas Smith’s 1562 inquiry, On the wages of the Roman Footsoldier (p 1144), is an example of the use of numismatics to inform a wider historical question, with contemporary political significance. Smith was part of the Cambridge coin club, which also included William Cecil, later Lord Burghley, who also influenced William Camden, the author of Britannia (1600) well illustrated with coins. Camden also worked with Robert Cotton and John Speed. All these figures understood the potential of coins to contribute to wider scholarship.

Coins require much detailed study if their evidence is to be fully understood; collections of coins yield more than individual specimens, and collecting often becomes an end in itself. Coins as memorials of the past were conveniently small, relatively plentiful and comparatively cheap to acquire. They are often attractive and interesting in their own right, but coins require dedicated detailed study if their chronology and attribution are to be understood. Even distinguishing genuine items from forgeries requires close attention to detail, of a kind that is not always easily compatible with a broader understanding of wider issues. Perhaps numismatists have always been teased for their short-sighted preoccupation with the minutiae, without fully exploring their wider relevance. Burnett cites a contemporary comment on the Oxford coin collector and donor, Browne Willis, of whom it was said that although he was ‘extremely well versed in coins, he knows hardly anything of mankind’ (p 404). John Battely, who worked on Richborough and Reculver, showed much self-awareness, describing himself being asked ‘Is there anything new … that you produce from your collection?’ (p 719). In short, numismatics requires close attention to tiny details, combined with a full appreciation of how coins can contribute to wider scholarly interests. For example, Elias Ashmole does not ‘ever seem to have deployed the potential evidence of the coins for any purpose’ (p 452).

Burnett also criticises Ashmole for the manner in which he acquired the Tradescant collection, legally but ‘immorally’ setting aside the interests of Ashmole’s widow. Not all numismatists were so careless of their wives’ interests. Sir Thomas Roe gave his silver and copper to the Bodleian, but his widow received the very large gold medal of Sigismund iii of Poland, given to Roe in the course of his embassy there. She in fact presented it to the Bodleian, apparently under the impression that the STR monogram it features stood for Sir Thomas Roe, rather than Sigismund Tertius Rex. We do not know if Sir Thomas or his widow made the joke, but it was passed on in The Annals of the Bodleian with a straight face.

If numismatists sometimes fail to demonstrate the wider relevance of their work, historians are often reluctant to engage with coins at all, which is, perhaps, surprising given the importance of money in our daily lives and in the lives of past generations of peasants and kings. Notable public events, such as the great recoinage of 1696 and the gold recoinage of 1733–4, sometimes stimulated interest as old coins were noticed and put aside before they were withdrawn from circulation, although the same effect was not noticed at the time of Elizabeth’s recoinage of 1560–2, probably because older pieces of interest had largely been withdrawn during the debasements of 1543–51.

If the wider public often fail to appreciate the value of numismatic study, while general historians sometimes also miss the point, this can affect the institutional structures on which numismatics depends. Museum numismatic departments and university syllabuses can strongly influence the health of the subject. Burnett’s study closes with the foundation of the British Museum, prompted principally by the gift of the Sloane collection, yet he also observes how it was the establishment of a dedicated numismatic department almost a century later in 1861 that transformed numismatics in Britain (p 1178), subsequently resulting in a various massive acquisitions and the inauguration of the series of British Museum catalogues that remain the standard references and continue to inform and stimulate further study. The model of the British Museum’s Department of Coins and Medals provided Arthur Evans with an example that contributed to the formation of the Heberden Coin Room in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford in 1922. The Department of Coins and Medals in Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum was built on the same model (energetically supported by Phillip Grierson, a twentieth-century medieval scholar and coin collector who can stand comparison with the early modern figures who populate Burnett’s study). Dedicated numismatic departments within museums also contribute to the life and learning of numismatic societies, which became important in the nineteenth century, although numismatics figured largely in the meetings of the Society of Antiquaries since its foundation in 1707. Universities, scholarly societies and museum numismatic departments provide an ideal environment for the study of coins, which can languish rapidly without such institutional support. It is hard to imagine that these meticulously researched, lavishly illustrated and beautifully produced volumes could have been possible without the help of the British Museum, where Burnett spent his professional life, and the support of the British and Royal Numismatic Societies.