Anglo-Saxon pennies found near the Vatican suggest the English spent their own coin in part of Rome

The denominator is 30 coins ^[2]. Twenty-one are English, 20 pennies and a half-penny ^[1], or 70 percent of the find ^[2]. Count only the 23 coins minted in the 10th century and the English share rises to about 91 percent ^[3]. Rory Naismith of the University of Cambridge said it is exceptional that most of the coins are English ^[10].

The count depends on identification, and many of the coins are fused together and hard to read ^[5]. Francesca Tinti of the University of the Basque Country, a member of the team, said the "shape, size and thickness" of the fused, unidentifiable pieces are consistent with the clearly English ones ^[7]. If those pieces are counted among the 20 pennies, part of the English tally rests on physical form. The legible coins come from East Anglia, Kent, London and the West Midlands ^[5].

English coins in an English quarter would be expected, and on their own they do not show a right to spend them. Other 10th-century English coins found in Rome have usually been treated as religious donations, not as regular currency ^[11]. Any new English deposit in the city has to be distinguished from that pattern.

The Italian coins were found intermingled with the English ones, Tinti said ^[8], and the deposit lay among leather, bone and metal craft remains ^[6]. "This seems to have been quite a busy, active area of the city, as the craft remains indicate," she said ^[9]. The team concludes that in this part of Rome, English coins were a major part of the local currency, used alongside Italian coins ^[12].

Naismith said the arrangement is out of step with its century. "This is highly unusual for the 10th century," he said, adding that "the norm was to use the local coin of whatever jurisdiction you were in" ^[13]. He compared the quarter with "the Chinatown areas of London, Melbourne, San Francisco and other cities" ^[16].

The link to a formal privilege runs through Asser's account of a papal grant to the English ^[14]. As New Scientist reports it, that account does not say the rights covered money. Joining the grant to the coins is the team's inference. I think it is a fair one, because a text recording special treatment and a deposit showing unusual money use point the same way.

The find does not settle how far the privilege reached. The evidence comes from one walled garden ^[1]. It cannot show whether English pennies circulated across the whole Schola, or for how long.

The team published the findings in a book, Rome and the Others (300-1000): Foreigners in the city between conflicts and integration ^[15]. Naismith said he and Tinti had dreamed of finding piles of English coins at the site, and never expected that what they imagined would turn out more or less right ^[17].