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intaglio, and a Saxon or Frankish circular ornament set
with garnets, in the burial-ground attached to the ancient church of St.
Martin, at Canterbury, may be considered as forming part of a funereal
deposit. Some of the coins are Merovingian: one is of Justin, who died
A.D. 527; and one, unique and of good workmanship, of Eupardus, Bishop
of Autun, of about the middle of the sixth century. The church of St.
Martin, without the walls of Canterbury, is mentioned in charters of
Ethelbert, A.D. 605 (Cod. Dip. AEvi Saxon. ii. and iii.); and also by
Bede, who states it was a Roman building, and that in it Bertha, the
wife of Ethelbert, a Christian convert, used to worship; and Augustine
and his companions also. It is most probable that, from their costly
nature, these ornaments belonged to some lady of the royal family or
court, and were interred with her.2 Gold coins of Mauricius
and of Heraclius, mounted in crosses of gold set with garnets, have been
found in Norfolk; but no crosses such as these have as yet been recorded
as
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discovered in Saxon graves: they are probably of somewhat later date
than the ornaments under consideration. The coins found in the Frankish
graves in France and Germany, do not assist us beyond the advances we
have made hitherto in our investigations in England. The Abbé Cochet,
to whom alone in all France we are most indebted for valuable materials
from Frankish cemeteries in Normandy,3 cites comparatively
few coins; and those chiefly of the Merovingian epoch, bearing names of
towns and moneyers. The piece of Charlemagne found in the valley of the
Eaulne, was not actually, it appears, taken from a grave, but from a
1. They are now side by side with the Faussett
Collection, in the Museum of Mr. Joseph Mayer, having been secured by
the zeal and vigilance of the late Mr Rolfe, of Sandwich.
2. They are figured in the ‘Collectanea Antiqua,’ vol. i. pl. xxii.
and lv.
3. ‘La Normandie Souterraine,’ second edition, 1855. Paris, London,
and Oxford.
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