Over the years I have shared a few examples of objects I have found while metal detecting near my home in Northumberland in NE England. I live in a rural estate that was the site of a medieval village with a manor house and defensive tower. Many of the things I find illustrate the amazing history of the location.
A few years ago I found a silver coin minted at Gdnask in Poland in 1539. This is an extremely rare discovery in England; how did a Polish coin find its way to a rural village in Northumberland nearly 500 years ago?
Along with looking for physical objects I also enjoy searching the archives to piece together the history of the lives of the people who once lived here, and one amazing discovery might shed light on the coin.
On Sunday 3 January 1563 the resident of the manor house got some unexpected visitors. Two men by the names of Willye Tatt and Davie Chambers arrived and explained that they were servants of the Earl of Bothwell who was in displeasure with the Queen and Council of Scotland. John Reveley agreed that they could stay at his house for a few days. They returned the next day along with James Hepburn, 1st Duke of Orkney, 4th Earl of Bothwell, Lord High Admiral of Scotland. Bothwell had been imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle on trumped-up charges of plotting to kidnap Mary Queen of Scots. Having made an escape he had taken passage on a ship at Leith harbour but a storm had forced them to shelter at the Holy Island of Lindisfarne just a few miles from here. This was the period post-Reformation and Bothwell was a Catholic. The estate here was one of two Catholic centres in North Northumberland.
A few days later Bothwell asked John Reveley to provide a guide to take his man Chambers back to Holy Island to see if there were any ships. John sent his nephew, also called John Reveley, and instructed him to bring back some more bottles of wine. Captain Roger Carew of the Berwick Garrison testified that he was making a secret search of Holy Island for Bothwell on Wednesday 6 January when he became aware of John Reveley junior seeking wine. He became suspicious that there may be guests at Berrington and dispatched the garrison to investigate. John Howard the Master of Ordinance of Berwick, Captain Cornewall, and John Dacres the Under Marshall, led the garrison from Berwick to Berrington in the middle of the night. John Reveley got out his bed in his shirt and confirmed he had guests staying in the vault ‘without his lodging’. The Earl had the door locked from the inside but his men answered it believing it to be Reveley who was knocking. They found Bothwell in bed, with his men fully clothed and armed and horses saddled. They took him into custody between four and five on the Thursday morning.
Bothwell spent some time in prison in England before returning to the royal court in Edinburgh. He was the prime suspect in the murder of Lord Darnley, the husband of Mary in 1567. Scottish society was outraged when Mary went on to marry Bothwell, her husband's murderer the same year. Mary fled to England, to years of imprisonment and her eventual execution by her cousin Elizabeth I. Bothwell perished in a dungeon in Dragsholm Castle in Denmark in 1578.
So what has all this to do with our coin? Well the records also show that Bothwell was on naval duties in Copenhagen in 1560 - where he met, married and abandoned the Norwegian noblewoman Anna Thronsden who was in Denmark assisting her father who was serving as the Royal Consul. Copenhagen is a relatively short sail from Gdnask and trade between the two ports would have been plentiful. The value of coins in this period lay in the intrinsic value of the silver they contained so foreign coins had the same value as domestic ones. It seems entirely likely that this coin was once owned by Bothwell and lost when he was removed to prison in the middle of the night. Five centuries later I found the coin that was last seen by the future King of Scotland - at least that is the story I will be telling my grandson.
