Et quia in Oxoniensi penu libraria, una cum Romanis bene multa Monarcharum Regni Angliae conduntur nomismata, specimen etiam eorum argento cussorum ad vos misimus, plures, sicunde praestinare contigerit, in posterum adjecturi. Alij etiam fortassis nostrum sequuti exemplar, suppetiatum hoc ipso in genere vobis advolent. Multo plura in Oxoniensi conduntur Bibliotheca quam apud vos cum Romana, tum Anglica, sed nonnulla inter ea adulterina, fusilia, novitia, indagantibus occurrunt, ut nullis nisi earum rerum peritissimis fraus subolere possit.
Ea autem omnia quae me devote et ultro offerente accepistis genuina esse, indubiamque sapere vetustatem satis di\g/nosco. In Monetae vero Britannicae et Anglicae designanda serie vix satis miremur, quinam fieri potuerit ut \Thomas/ Iohannis Barkhamus S T P (cuius ea super re exaratum Autographum pene totum percurrimus) nomenclaturae numariae ultra mediocritatem callens tam crasse hallucinaretur.
Paucula liceat \nobis/ edere specimina. Inter numos Britannicos plurimos Traiani, Hadriani, aliorumque Caesarum viliores, (quorum inscriptiones et figurae Britanniam nullatenus spectant) collocat; nec minus incongrue \alteros/ Constantini Magni, Liciniani Licinij, et eiusdem seculi aliorum \aeneos/ parepigraphis infra figuram caelatis male intellectis, ad urbes Britannicas, alibi procul dubio cusos refert.
Faeculenta ibidem in citerioribus seriatim disponendis regni Angliae Monarchis impingit. Ad Edouardum enim primum argenteum trahit in cuius averso Rosa radiata, sive potius Rosa in medio praegrandis stimuli calcaris caelatur, cum rosae albae symbolum Edouardo quarto illius trinepoti, post fatale inter familias Eboracensem et Lancastrensem intestinum ortum bellum usurpatum fuerit.
Aureum amplum in cuius adverso Rex corona arcuata caput ornatus, et Augustali stola amictus, solio insidens, pedibusque portae pensili cancellatae ceu frabello inmixus, Henrico eius nominis V mirifice errans adscribit, cum illius caput integro vultu adverso in Moneta, corona ex lilijs et cuspidibus alternatim collocatis aperta adumbratur, et Henricum VI ipsius filium unicum et ex asse haeredem, regni etiam ffranciae in Metropoli Parisijs inauguratum Regem, diademate cooperto in Numismatis suis, tam aureis, quam argenteis, quantum investigando assequi possum, usum fuisse reperio.
Atqui incertum etsi id esset, indubiae tamen illud ad Henricum VII pertinere ex porta illa pensili cancellata novimus, quae, spuriae prolis Joanne Gandavensi Lancastrio ortae, tessera et quadamtenus insigne fuit gentilitium, uti in Divo Joanni dicato collegio a Margaretae ipsius matre Joannis Belfortij Somersetensis filia unica et haeredi fundato, cum inibi olim studijs vacarem in moenibus et fenestris expressum me memini.
Caeteris vero in illa Numismatum serie descripta hallucinationibus propalandis, ne nauseam vobis meae cierent quisquiliae, supersedibo.
[And because many coins indeed of the English monarchs are kept in the possession of the library at Oxford, together with the Roman ones, I have sent you also an example of such pieces struck in silver; more will be added later, as the opportunity to buy them arises. Others perhaps will follow my example, and will been keen to be of assistance to you in exactly this way. Many more are held in the Oxford Library than in yours, both Roman and English, but several among them strike those examining them as false, cast, and recent, in such a way that their falsity can be detected by no one apart from those who are very skilled in such things.
I can tell well enough that all those which you have received from me, humbly and at my own accord, are genuine, and I can tell their undoubted antiquity. In classifying the series of the British and English coinage, I was greatly amazed at how it could happen that Thomas John Barkham (whose written manuscript on the matter I have gone through almost entirely), whose skill at numismatic terminology is above average, could fantasise so stupidly.
Let me give a few little examples. He places, among the British coins, very many of the poorer pieces of Trajan, Hadrian and other emperors (whose inscriptions and designs refer in no way to Britain): no less inappropriately he attributes other bronzes of Constantine the Great, of Licinianus the son of Licinius and of others from the same period, having wrongly read the subsidiary inscriptions engraved below the design, to British cities, when without any doubt they were struck elsewhere.
In the same work he has thrown in pieces of rubbish, in his later arrangement of the Kings of England. For he drags under Edward I a silver coin on whose reverse a radiate Rose, or rather a Rose in the middle of a very large stone spur (?), is engraved, although the symbol of the white rose was usurped by Edward IV his great-great-grandson, after the deadly civil war between the families of York and Lancaster had begun.
Making an amazing error, he attributes a large gold coin on whose obverse is a King wearing an arched crown on his head, dressed in an imperial cloak, sitting on a throne and placing his feet on a hanging latticed gate like a footstool, to Henry of that name the Fifth, although his head is shown with a full face on the obverse on the coinage, with an open crown with lilies and spears alternately placed on it, and I find that Henry VI, his only son and sole heir, the King who inaugurated his reign in Paris, the capital of the kingdom of France, used the covered diadem, as far as I have been able to ascertain through my research.
And although that may be uncertain, there can be no doubt that we know from the hanging latticed gate that it refers to Henry VII, and that, after the birth of the illegitimate offspring of the Lancastrian John of Gaunt, it was a sign of belonging to the reasonably famous family, as I remember, from when I once spent time there on my studies, that it was on the walls and windows in the college of the divine John, founded by Margaret the mother of Joan Beaufort of Somerset, her only daughter and heir.
I will pass over the other fantasies set out in that description of the series of coins, in case my odds and ends might make you feel sick.]
(BL, MS Harley 377, ff.160r-161r; Burnett 2020b, pp. 1462-3)
