His intellectual legacy consists of a trio of highly influential books: Money and Its Uses in Medieval Europe (1988), a groundbreaking study of the role of coined money and credit in the working of the medieval economy; the Handbook of Medieval Exchange (1986), a reference work gathering up all of the then-known data on the rates at which currencies in medieval western Europe were exchanged, across the period; and Power and Profit: The Merchant in Medieval Europe (2003), an illustrated study of medieval trade routes, banking, merchant life and commodity trading. While all three books have shaped the academic study of the medieval economy, the third also found an enthusiastic audience among general readers – and as a resource for fantasy novelists including Daniel Abraham and Guy Gavriel Kay.
Spufford joined the Society of Genealogists in 1955, became a Fellow of the Society in 1969, and served as its Vice-President from 1997 to 2012. He edited the Society's journal from 1961 to 1963.[5]
Spufford was married to Professor Margaret Spufford (née Clark; 1935–2014) who was a British academic and historian. They had two children; a son, Francis, and a daughter, Bridget, who pre-deceased them; Bridget is well remembered by Bridget's Hostel for disabled students in Cambridge.[4]
Spufford died on 18 November 2017. His funeral was held on 24 November at the Church of St Mary and St Andrew, Whittlesford, Cambridgeshire.[6]
^ ab'SPUFFORD, Prof. Peter', Who's Who 2017, A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 2017; online edn, Oxford University Press, 2016; online edn, Nov 2016 accessed 23 Sept 2017
^'Obituary - Professor Peter Spufford, LittD, FBA, FSA, FSG' Genealogists' Magazine, Vol. 32, No. 9 (March 2018)