Dr. Andrew Burnett, Roman Coins, Money and Elizabethan Society: an Unknown Work by Sir Thomas Smith
Channel: American Numismatic Society
Date: 2016-10-31

Dr. Andrew Burnett delivers the 2016 Mark M. Salton Memorial Lecture at the American Numismatic Society. In this lecture, Dr. Burnett discusses Sir Thomas Smith’s On the Wages of the Roman Footsoldier, a work that is virtually unknown to modern scholarship, and, although it is the first original work written in England to use the evidence of ancient coins, it has previously played no part in the history of numismatics. Yet it clearly deserves to be better known, both for that reason and for many others. It throws new light on the “Cambridge circle,” the group of academics-turned-politicians who played a crucial role in the smooth accession of Elizabeth I. It allows us to reconstruct something of the humanistic interest in numismatics, adumbrated earlier in the century by Tunstall and More, but otherwise only returning to visibility with the work of Camden, Cotton, and the Elizabethan College of Antiquaries. It provides another strand to our knowledge of the importance of the Roman precedent in both influencing contemporary thought and having a direct bearing on contemporary politics.

Note that since this lecture was delivered, Dr. Burnett's research on Thomas Smith was published in book form by the ANS. See: http://numismatics.org/store/owrf/

Dr. Burnett is former Deputy Director and Keeper of Coins at the British Museum.