Summary:
This article revisits a locus classicus of British Catholic History, the interpretation of the coin-hoard found in 1611 by the Lancashire squire William Blundell of Little Crosby. This article offers new information, approaching the Harkirk silver from several perspectives.Mark Blundell offers a memoir of his ancestor William Blundell, as well as lending his voice to the account of the subsequent fate of the Harkirk silver; Jane Stevenson and Peter Davidson reconsider the sources for William Blundell’s historiography as well as considering wider questions of memory and the recusant community; Dora Thornton analyses the silver pyx made from the Harkirk coins in detail, and surveys analogous silverwork in depth.
Keywords:
Little Crosby, William Blundell (1560-1638), material culture, historiography, recusant silver, Lancashire, construction of memory.
