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Vetusta Monumenta: Ancient Monuments, a Digital Edition

Plate 1.69: Engraving of a Standard of Weights and Measures, 1497

Plate 1.69 of Vetusta Monumenta reproduces Henry VII’s 1497 Standard of Weights and Measures based on an original parchment that was pasted on an oak table formerly in the Treasury of the King’s Exchequer at Westminster and in the collection of Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford and Mortimer. Engraving by George Vertue after his own drawing. 613 x 453 mm (bifolium). Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1746. Current Location: Untraced.

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Contents of this path:
1. Plate 1.50: Engravings of Three Roman Pavements found at Wellow (1 of 3) Plates 1.50-1.52 of Vetusta Monumenta depict three mid fourth-century CE Roman mosaic pavements at Wellow, Somerset, UK, the first of which was found by John Aubrey c. 1685. Further investigations of the site were carried out in 1737 by Edmund Prideaux and James West, who found the second and third pavements, respectively. Engravings by George Vertue after James Vertue and James West. 365 x 529 mm, 360 x 469 mm, and 368 x 476 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1738. Current location: Mosaics I (Plate 1.50) and III (Plate 1.52) no longer survive; Mosaic II (Plate 1.51) was found in 1737, reopened and damaged in 1807, and is now thought to be lost.
2. Plate 1.51: Engravings of Three Roman Pavements found at Wellow (2 of 3) Plates 1.50-1.52 of Vetusta Monumenta depict three mid fourth-century CE Roman mosaic pavements at Wellow, Somerset, UK, the first of which was found by John Aubrey c. 1685. Further investigations of the site were carried out in 1737 by Edmund Prideaux and James West, who found the second and third pavements, respectively. Engravings by George Vertue after James Vertue and James West. 365 x 529 mm, 360 x 469 mm, and 368 x 476 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1738. Current location: Mosaics I (Plate 1.50) and III (Plate 1.52) no longer survive; Mosaic II (Plate 1.51) was found in 1737, reopened and damaged in 1807, and is now thought to be lost.
3. Plate 1.52: Engravings of Three Roman Pavements found at Wellow (3 of 3) Plates 1.50-1.52 of Vetusta Monumenta depict three mid fourth-century CE Roman mosaic pavements at Wellow, Somerset, UK, the first of which was found by John Aubrey c. 1685. Further investigations of the site were carried out in 1737 by Edmund Prideaux and James West, who found the second and third pavements, respectively. Engravings by George Vertue after James Vertue and James West. 365 x 529 mm, 360 x 469 mm, and 368 x 476 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1738. Current location: Mosaics I (Plate 1.50) and III (Plate 1.52) no longer survive; Mosaic II (Plate 1.51) was found in 1737, reopened and damaged in 1807, and is now thought to be lost.
4. Plate 1.53: Engravings of Lancaster Duchy Office Seals, Part A (1 of 2) Plates 1.53-1.54 of Vetusta Monumenta depict sixteen seals dating from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries. Most of the seals were held in the Office of the Duchy of Lancaster, but a few were held in the Augmentation Office at Westminster. Engravings by George Vertue after his own drawings. 427 x 252 mm and 426 x 253 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1738. Current locations: Most of the seals here depicted are in the National Archives, Kew, UK; a few may be in the Westminster Abbey Muniment Collection, London, UK.
5. Plate 1.54: Engravings of Lancaster Duchy Office Seals, Part A (2 of 2) Plates 1.53-1.54 of Vetusta Monumenta depict sixteen seals dating from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries. Most of the seals were held in the Office of the Duchy of Lancaster, but a few were held in the Augmentation Office at Westminster. Engravings by George Vertue after his own drawings. 427 x 252 mm and 426 x 253 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1738. Current locations: Most of the seals here depicted are in the National Archives, Kew, UK; a few may be in the Westminster Abbey Muniment Collection, London, UK.
6. Plate 1.55: Engraving of Stuart Medals Plate 1.55 of Vetusta Monumenta depicts eight numismatic objects associated with the Stuarts: a gold coin of Mary, Queen of Scots (1555); a silver medal commemorating Mary’s marriage to Lord Darnely, featuring Darnley’s name before Mary’s (1565); a silver coronation medal (c. 1604) for Queen Anne; a silver medal for Prince Henry (1612); two milled gold proof pieces minted for Charles I (c. 1630 and c. 1631-32) and two gold medals based on the same (1639 and unknown). Engraving by George Vertue after his own drawings in at least four states between 1723 and 1739. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1739. Current location: The locations of the eight specific objects here engraved have not been identified, but examples of them can be found in the National Museum of Scotland (Edinburgh, UK), the British Museum (London, UK), and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, US).
7. Plate 1.56: Engraving of English Gold and Silver Coins Plate 1.56 of Vetusta Monumenta depicts thirteen coins minted by English monarchs between the fourteenth and the early-seventeenth centuries: a gold quarter florin of King Edward III (c. 1344), a gold escu of King Edward III (after 1337), a half groat of Edward III (before1369), a half groat of Edward the Black Prince (c. 1368-1372), a groat of Edward the Black Prince (c. 1362-72), a gold angel of Henry VI (c. 1470), a quadruple noble of Henry VII, Type 4 (c. 1503-04), a Tournay groat of Henry VIII (c. 1514), a George noble of Henry VIII (c. 1526-29), a sovereign in crown gold of Elizabeth I (c. 1565), a pattern piece for a gold crown of Edward VI (c. 1547), a pattern sixpence of Elizabeth I (1575), and a Portcullis crown of Elizabeth I (c. 1601). Engraving by George Vertue after his own drawings. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1739. Current locations: The locations of the thirteen specific coins here engraved have not been identified, but examples of them can be found in the British Museum (London, UK), the Royal Mint Museum (London, UK), the Ashmolean Museum (Oxford, UK), and the Museums Victoria (Melbourne, Australia).
8. Plate 1.57: Engraving of a Roman Hypocaust Found at Lincoln Plate 1.57 of Vetusta Monumenta depicts a Roman hypocaust found beneath the subdeanery near the west side of Lincoln Cathedral and first identified by Thomas Sympson on 10 February 1740. The print incorporates material from Sympson’s original letter and plan documenting the discovery. Engraving by George Vertue after his own drawings. 327 x 480 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1740. Current location: The structure was discovered thirteen feet underground and belongs to the only remaining private Roman town house in Lincoln, UK.
9. Plate 1.58: Engravings of Lancaster Duchy Office Seals, Part B (1 of 3) Plates 1.58-1.60 of Vetusta Monumenta depict twenty-seven seals dating from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries. The seals were held in the Duchy Office of Lancaster and in the Augmentation Office at Westminster. Engravings by George Vertue after his own drawings. 420 x 255 mm, 420 x 257 mm, and 419 x 254 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1741. Current locations: Most of the seals here depicted are in the National Archives, Kew, UK; a few may be in the Westminster Abbey Muniment Collection, London, UK.
10. Plate 1.59: Engravings of Lancaster Duchy Office Seals, Part B (2 of 3) Plates 1.58-1.60 of Vetusta Monumenta depict twenty-seven seals dating from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries. The seals were held in the Duchy Office of Lancaster and in the Augmentation Office at Westminster. Engravings by George Vertue after his own drawings. 420 x 255 mm, 420 x 257 mm, and 419 x 254 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1741. Current locations: Most of the seals here depicted are in the National Archives, Kew, UK; a few may be in the Westminster Abbey Muniment Collection, London, UK.
11. Plate 1.60: Engravings of Lancaster Duchy Office Seals, Part B (3 of 3) Plates 1.58-1.60 of Vetusta Monumenta depict twenty-seven seals dating from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries. The seals were held in the Duchy Office of Lancaster and in the Augmentation Office at Westminster. Engravings by George Vertue after his own drawings. 420 x 255 mm, 420 x 257 mm, and 419 x 254 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1741. Current locations: Most of the seals here depicted are in the National Archives, Kew, UK; a few may be in the Westminster Abbey Muniment Collection, London, UK.
12. Plate 1.61: Engraving of Winchester Cross Plate 1.61 of Vetusta Monumenta depicts the Winchester Cross, popularly called the “High,” “Market,” or “Butter” Cross, with three pairs of human figures gathered around its base. These figures recall the transactions which give the Cross its colloquial names and exemplify its ongoing social and commercial functions. One of the two figures on the right displays a plan view of the same monument. Engraving by George Vertue, likely after Augustin Ménageot. 491 x 315 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1741. Current location: 106a High St, Winchester, UK.
13. Plate 1.62: Engraving of the Oxford Decree Against Papal Jurisdiction, 1534 Plate 1.62 of Vetusta Monumenta reproduces Oxford University's 1534 decree against the Papal supremacy with added engravings of the shields of the twelve Oxford colleges then extant, the university’s thirteenth-century common seal, and Henry VIII’s portrait medal as Fidei Defensor (1545). Engraving by George Vertue after his own drawings and a copy of the decree then in the Harleian Library. 418 x 543 mm (bifolium). Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1741. Current locations: The oldest surviving version of the decree is in the Bodleian Library (MS Bodl. 282, fol. 129), Oxford University, UK; the medal of Henry VIII is currently held in the British Museum (M.6802), London, UK.
14. Plate 1.63: Engraving of a Plan of the Tower Liberties, 1597 Plate 1.63 of Vetusta Monumenta reproduces William Hayward’s (or Haiward’s) and John Gascoyne’s 1597 survey of the Tower Liberties in London. Engraving by George Vertue after a copy of the survey that was in the collection of John Montagu, the 2nd Duke of Montagu. 413 x 546 mm (bifolium). Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1742. Current location: The original survey is now missing, but the pen and ink copy of the survey (likely by Vertue) is currently in the Society of Antiquaries of London (Prints & Drawings Collected Before 1750 [196h] fol. 66), London, UK.
15. Plate 1.64: Engraving of Chichester Cross Plate 1.64 of Vetusta Monumenta presents a variorum view of Chichester Cross as it appeared (or might have appeared) at several times in the previous half-century, including the west front of the cross, a plan view of the cross, and an elevation of the highest part of the cross. The print also includes a human figure in the lower left, selling produce; a spaniel stands expectantly nearby. Inside the cross, a boy plays. In the background and to the east of the monument are some houses. Engraving by George Vertue after Augustin Ménageot. 472 x 279 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1743. Current location: South St, Chichester, West Sussex, UK.
16. Plate 1.65: Engraving of Roman Net-Fighters Plate 1.65 of Vetusta Monumenta reproduces two works of art in different media that depict the type of Roman gladiator known as a retiarius or net-fighter. The upper half reproduces a seventeenth-century drawing by Pietro Santi Bartoli of a late-third or early-fourth-century CE Roman mosaic uncovered in Rome in 1670. The lower half depicts the sculptured fragment of a second-century Romano-British stone frieze, possibly from a tomb, that was found during construction work in Chester, UK in 1738. Engraving by George Vertue after Pietro Santi Bartoli (upper half) and his own drawing (lower half). 416 x 288 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1743. Current locations: The mosaic is in the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid, Spain; the relief is in the collection of the Saffron Walden Museum, Saffron Walden, Essex, UK. The Bartoli drawing is preserved in a manuscript associated with the owner of the Chester gladiator, Richard Mead (Glasgow University Library MS Gen. 1496), Glasgow, Scotland.
17. Plate 1.66: Engravings of a Portrait of Robert Cotton with Genesis Fragments (1 of 3) Plates 1.66-1.68 of Vetusta Monumenta reproduce a c. 1626 portrait of Robert Cotton and fragments of the Cotton Genesis manuscript. The portrait shown on Plate 1.66 is now attributed to Cornelius Johnson. Plates 1.67-1.68 depict twenty-one fragments from eighteen folio pages of the Cotton Genesis collated with transcriptions from the Codex Vaticanus. Two additional pages from the Cotton Genesis are also depicted on the portrait. Engravings by George Vertue after the original portrait and his own watercolors of the Cotton Genesis fragments. 372 x 245 mm, 384 x 255 mm, and 387 x 259 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1744. Current locations: The Cotton Genesis is currently in the British Library (Cotton MS Otho b vi f26v), London, UK; Vertue’s original watercolors of the fragments remain in the Society of Antiquaries of London (Prints & Drawings Collected Before 1750 [196h] fols. 72-73), London, UK; the Codex Vaticanus is in the Vatican Library (1209), Vatican City; the portrait of Cotton is in a private collection.
18. Plate 1.67: Engravings of a Portrait of Robert Cotton with Genesis Fragments (2 of 3) Plates 1.66-1.68 of Vetusta Monumenta reproduce a c. 1626 portrait of Robert Cotton and fragments of the Cotton Genesis manuscript. The portrait shown on Plate 1.66 is now attributed to Cornelius Johnson. Plates 1.67-1.68 depict twenty-one fragments from eighteen folio pages of the Cotton Genesis collated with transcriptions from the Codex Vaticanus. Two additional pages from the Cotton Genesis are also depicted on the portrait. Engravings by George Vertue after the original portrait and his own watercolors of the Cotton Genesis fragments. 372 x 245 mm, 384 x 255 mm, and 387 x 259 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1744. Current locations: The Cotton Genesis is currently in the British Library (Cotton MS Otho b vi f26v), London, UK; Vertue’s original watercolors of the fragments remain in the Society of Antiquaries of London (Prints & Drawings Collected Before 1750 [196h] fols. 72-73), London, UK; the Codex Vaticanus is in the Vatican Library (1209), Vatican City; the portrait of Cotton is in a private collection.
19. Plate 1.68: Engravings of a Portrait of Robert Cotton with Genesis Fragments (3 of 3) Plates 1.66-1.68 of Vetusta Monumenta reproduce a c. 1626 portrait of Robert Cotton and fragments of the Cotton Genesis manuscript. The portrait shown on Plate 1.66 is now attributed to Cornelius Johnson. Plates 1.67-1.68 depict twenty-one fragments from eighteen folio pages of the Cotton Genesis collated with transcriptions from the Codex Vaticanus. Two additional pages from the Cotton Genesis are also depicted on the portrait. Engravings by George Vertue after the original portrait and his own watercolors of the Cotton Genesis fragments. 372 x 245 mm, 384 x 255 mm, and 387 x 259 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1744. Current locations: The Cotton Genesis is currently in the British Library (Cotton MS Otho b vi f26v), London, UK; Vertue’s original watercolors of the fragments remain in the Society of Antiquaries of London (Prints & Drawings Collected Before 1750 [196h] fols. 72-73), London, UK; the Codex Vaticanus is in the Vatican Library (1209), Vatican City; the portrait of Cotton is in a private collection.
20. Plate 1.69: Engraving of a Standard of Weights and Measures, 1497 Plate 1.69 of Vetusta Monumenta reproduces Henry VII’s 1497 Standard of Weights and Measures based on an original parchment that was pasted on an oak table formerly in the Treasury of the King’s Exchequer at Westminster and in the collection of Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford and Mortimer. Engraving by George Vertue after his own drawing. 613 x 453 mm (bifolium). Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1746. Current Location: Untraced.
21. Plate 1.70: Engraving of the Court of Wards and Liveries Plate 1.70 of Vetusta Monumenta reproduces an anonymous, undated painting in oil—probably from the early seventeenth century, but possibly a copy of a sixteenth-century original—of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, presiding over the Court of Wards and Liveries. The Court was set up by Henry VIII in 1540 and dissolved by an Act of Parliament in 1660. The painting was in the collection of Charles Lennox, Duke of Richmond. Engraving by George Vertue after his own drawing. 474 x 454 mm (bifolium). Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1747. Current location: Goodwood House, near Chichester, West Sussex, UK.

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Plate 1.69: Standard of Weights and Measures, 1497 Plate: Henry VII’s 1497 Standard of Weights and Measures, engraved by George Vertue (1684-1756) from a copy “fix’t on an Oak Table” in the collection of the Edward Harley, second Earl of Oxford and Mortimer (1689-1741) in 1746.

Object: Henry VII’s 1497 Standard of Weights and Measures. In Henry VII’s administrative document, the Society of Antiquaries of London would have seen not only a significant historical artifact worthy of preservation, but also an essential reference point in its long-standing project to catalogue a history of English coinage (see also Plates 1.20, 1.37-1.38, 1.43, 1.55, and 1.56). To both the eighteenth-century antiquary and the contemporary viewer, Henry VII’s 1497 document presents a compelling index of the English crown’s burgeoning regulatory power in the tumult of fifteenth-century national and economic transition. Plate 1.69 also illustrates the Society’s engagement in the project of cataloguing and reconciling international metrological and numismatic standards, which member and future president Martin Folkes (1690-1754) had also championed as president of the Royal Society from 1741-1752. Printed in 1746, Plate 1.69 evinces the growth of Folkes’s often-contested influence over both Societies’ agendas.

Transcription:

Headnote for readers of this edition: The abbreviation “li” or “li.” stands for £ or pound throughout; “d” stands for pence. Roman numerals are used throughout, including the capital C for one hundred. The text includes space-saving scribal conventions, including the ˜ and sometimes ’ to indicate letters omitted when words are truncated; ō is often used when an m or n following the o is omitted. Vertue uses cross-hatching on the plate to indicate lacunae where portions of text are worn away. These are rendered by […].

Top: The STANDARD of WEIGHTS and MEASURES in the Exchequer. Anno. 120. Henrici Septimi.

Text Running Down the Left Margin:
The clerke of y^e markett
Shall make proclamacon y^t
Artificers & vitulars shall
followe y^e Cowrt and kepe
ther markett & y^t no man do
troble them but to take yt
in y^e marketplace upon payn.

This clerke sercheth every
moneth upon the rule of
ryotte that Ben used in the
contry by y^e soiornantes
of all y^e kings howsholde &
it to recorde to the lorde
stewarde Treasuror & cōtroller
of the howsholde

Anno iiii⁰ h.iiii ca⁰ x⁰

The Cuynars to be sworne ⁱⁿ speciallie y^t y^e thirde pte of y^e Bullion Be made in halpens & farthings
y^t is to saie that one half of the
saide third in halpens & y^e
other half in farthings of [...]

Alle suche Oãs [rates] as y^e Clerke
of the market taketh in ev’y
market towne for y^e kinge by
xii men for y^e p’ce of grayne &
vytall to be delyver’d into
y^e Countinge howse under ^ye
seale of his office ev’y moneth
and as ofte as nede requireth.
This clerke standeth for a
squire of howsholde and
shall have his lyv’y meat
and drinke as other esquires hath. This clerke shalbe en-
quired of by y^e lorde stewarde
of howsholde whether y^e clerke
of ye market doo eny extorcion
or make eny cōmon fyne
contrarye to the statutes ther-
uppon made The firste fyne is
vli. The seconde is xli.
The thirde tyme to the Tower &
paye xxli. Anno primo h.
iiii⁶ Cap⁰ xvii. whoso di-
sturbeth a foren or an alyen
for to sell fishe or fleshe
in London or ellswhere in greate
or in retayle shall less xlli.
And who that sueth shall have
the one half Anno xv. R. ii.
Cap⁰ iiii⁰. he that byeth mo-
re fore the quarter then viii
busshells rased shall forfate
the corne to the kinge. Anno
viii⁰. H vi⁰. Cap⁰. v⁰. Everye
towne must have a cōmon ba-
lans & weight & a cōmon bus-
shell by a chaine ensealed
uppon paine of xl li. An⁰ xiiii.
Re Ca. iiii⁰. One measure of
corne wyne & ale be thorout
y^e realme uppon payne of xl li.
Anno xiii⁰. R. ii⁰. Ca⁰. x⁰.

Five Dates, Serving as Marginal Glosses for the Text to the Right:
Anno iiii⁰. H.iiii^g. Ca⁰. x⁰.
Anno piii⁰. H. vi^g. Ca⁰. iiii⁰.
Anno iiii⁰. H.iiii^g. Ca⁰. x⁰.
A⁰. v⁰. xiiii. Rdci. R C^z iii
Anno iiii⁰. C^zca⁰iii⁰

Diagram Labels, Lower Left:
iii scores & iii a hoggishead. vi scoore & vi a pipe ffor gaginge y^e tōne by y^e gallō of
England xii score & xii gallons for a tonne.
A hoggished
A pipe
A Tonne

Diagram Labels, Upper Left:
The whete eare
Too graynes maketh xvi pte of a penny
The Conage of y^e mynte
Ffower graynes maketh the viii p^te. of a penny
The iiii pte of a penny is a farthinge
XVI graynes an halpeny, the halpeny w^th y^e peny and halpeny and the farthinge is all poore mens
upon all manner of vitelers of this realme
The penne starlinge
the peny & farthing maketh the xvi pte of an unce

Banners in the Center, Left Image:
Justicia quid est
Honeste vivere
Justum unicuiq retribuere et podere et mēsura
Alterum non ledere

Text, Left:
This is the charge of the Clerke of the markette Cowrte.
for all manner weighte measure and vytelars & Craftismen
ffyrst the cyse of a miller. y^t his tolle dishe be sealed asised & excise not
The cyse¹ of a Baker. vi d. hyinge vi d. lowinge in y^e p’ce of a qt wheat
The cyse of a Brewer. xii d. hynge xii d. lowinge in y^e p’ce of a qt malte
The cyse of a Ffyssher. y^t he sell no fishe but it be holsome for man
The cyse of a Bocher y^t he fective fleshe nor no excesse take
The cyse of a Inholder. y^t he be a trew man his measure cysed & sealed
The cyse of a Spicer. & of a grocer. y^t his ware be clene garbelde
The cyse of a Tanner. y^t he tanne ox leather and netes & calves
The cyse of a Taverner. y^t his wyne be hole and holsome for man
The cyse of a Tallowchaundler. as tallows hie & lowe so shal he sell
The cyse of a weaver. y^t his weight be trewe yt he weyeth by
The cyse of a collier. y^t his sacke be ii yardes & y^e naile & iii q’ters brod
The cyse of a Cordenar. y^t he make shoes and Botes of netyes leather
The cyse of a Tawyer y^t he shall tawe no But shepes leather & deres
The cyse of a mercer. drap or taylor. y^t their yerdes Be sealed
The cyse of Cuynars. they shall kepe weight and number
The cyse of the master of the mynte. he shall holde none exchange
The cyse of Barbers. he shall caste no Bloude nor heare in y^e strete
The cyse of Saddelers. y^t they make good stuff for the King[s] people
The cyse of Berebrewers. y^t they occupie no mustie corne
The cyse of goldesmithes. y^t they make no deceytfull plate
The cyse of vyttellers. y^t they occupie good & holsome vitailes for man
The cyse that no manner of man nor woman shall forstalle
nor regrate no man thinge y^t shulde come unto y^e market nother
by water nor lande. nor w^th in y^e towne nor w^th out wherby the
market shulde be y^e worse, and great hurte to y^e comons
to bye at y^e secunde hande. This provided they to be amerced
and judged to y^e forme and statutes before rehersed. Ordayned
by y^e kinge that all mayors Sheriffs. Justices of peace. constables.
and Baillies of Cities townes & villages to maintaine y^e p’misses.
Also y^e fore written thinges be kept in y^e king[s] behalf so that
any man more or less agenst y^e statute before written in worde
counsell helpe or favor presume to be taken & emp’soned as a
dispisor of y^e king[s] comaundements And be not delyv’ed owt
of y^e prison till he be delyvared by the kinges comaundement
or by his wrytt expressed.
Any man y^c maketh takinge in y^e king[s] name
w^th out comyssion shall be punyshed as a fellon.

Banner in the Top, Center Image: Justicia tua domine justicia in eternum et lex tua veritas / justicia tua dñe et regnum judicium tuum

Text, Center:
Aequalis ponderis erunt omnia. Exodi XXX.
Statera justa et æqua sint pondera ^justusæquusque sextarius
Non habebis in sacculo diversa pondera majus et minus leuit xix⁰
Nec erit in domo tua modius major et minor pondus habebis justum
et verum et modius equalis et verus erit tibi. deut^onomii xxv⁰
[...] Sapiens ii [xi]

justicia tua domine justicia in eternum et lex tua veritas.
As god hath called you to his gr’e,we have admitted you ī y^e
place one of o˜ [our] councell to be. therfore do iustice to poore and riche
And here the poore before the riche for our honor. w^ch is
to you greate succor in tyme of nede.

By the discretion & ordinannce of o˜ [our] soveraigne lorde y^e kinge & of his
lordes sp’uall & te’pall w^th y^e comons of y^e same his realme of England
of all man˜ of weight & measure y^t was made by y^e grayne of wheate.
That is to understande y^t xxxii graynes of wheat taken out of y^e
middest of y^e yeare weieth a starlinge otherwise called a penny &
xx starlinge maketh an once. And xii onces maketh a li of troy
weight for sylv˜ golde, breade, and measure w^th half an unce w^ch
weight maketh a pynte of wheate. & ii pynt[s] maketh a quarte
and ii quartes maketh a pottell. And ii pottells maketh a gallon.
& viii gallons maketh a Busshell of wheat and nother heape nor
cancell to be striken w^th a raysinge strike And viii busshells
maketh a quarter stricken w^th a raysinge strike & nother heape ne
cancell. The same tyme ordayned y^t xvi onces of troye maketh y^e
haver de pause [avoirdupois] a li. for to by & sell spice by to be devided from y^e most
pte to the least that is to saie y^e unce and a li for garbeling a li.
ii li, iii li, iiii li, viii li, and no further of old tyme called y^e stone of [L]ondon.
the C is trew at this daie v. scoore for y^e C as it apereth in magna-
carta Anno xiiii. Eiii⁰. Cap⁰. xii. Anno. vii. H.vii. C. iii.

The clerke of the market of the kings howsholde & thorough
all the realme of Englande shall doe and execute his office wheir
so ev’ he will in Cyties, Borowes, and in Townes uppon all
manner of weight an measures, vytellars, artificers, forstallers,
and regrators as well w^th in liberties as w^th out no franches broken
but asisted by his p’sens in as large forme as yt was ordeyned by
any other kinges tymes past for the comon weale accordinge to y^e
statutes heretofore made. This clarke shall punisshe all suche
trespassors and disebediens that this myseuse of cyses agenst y^e
kings statutes olde or new that dothe offende the kings pclamacon

Note:

[1]: Used here as a noun meaning “rule” or “regulation” (but see also “size, v.1”).

To the Right of Center Image:
fforstaller and
regrat of marketts
and feyres and
vittelars

Text Below Center Image:
Too half busshells maketh one busshell w^ch conteyneth in weight 1 li. w^ch is in mesure lxiiii pyntes ther is proued troy & haverdepause for one weight and one mesure. after viii C unces the halfe hunderd w^ch conteyneth xvi c.li. in golde as it apereth by the Bakers sise boke when a q’tter of wheate is at v^s the pennye loffe weieth viii li vi⁰ viiid then have ye iiii score & iiii loves of that quarter there is ^e weight and number. viii busshells for ^e qu’ater raced to be strekyn w^th a raced strike nother heape nor cancell for to be a quarter And that q’ter of wheat conteyneth in weight iiii C weight. And who y^t taketh more then viii busshells striken for a quarter shall forfitt y^e corne to y^e kinge.

Diagram Labels, Lower Center:
half a busshell
xxv li in weight
A busshell
viii C unces
half a C weight
A quarter conteyneth CCCC li

Diagram Labels, Upper Right:
Too pens halpeny the viii pte of an unce
ffyve pense w^ch conteyneth the iiii^th pte of an unce
Tenne peny weight conteyneth half an unce
Anno iiii⁰. H. iiii^ci Cap x⁰
Also y^t nether goldsmith ne other shall melt penne halpenne nor ffarthinge upon paine of forfe[i]ting y^e quadruple [...] monye ever [...] for y^e use of our realme

Twentie pence y^e unce of troye w^ch is for sylver & golde & brede & all other manner of wares for one unce and one penne. The same tyme ordayned xii unces of troy to be for xx^s sterling after xx pens y^e unce and xii unces for y^e pound weight w^ch is xl^s coyne at this daie w^ch is iiii ryalls of olde tyme called iiii nobles the w^ch weight standeth at this tyme for the sise of the Baker and other sises.

Annotation, Top Right: NB. The Original Parchment is fix’t on an Oak Table such of the Lines and Words as have a Line drawn under them are writ with Red Ink.

Text Running Down the Right Margin:
This booke enacted and
confirmed the xii yere
of henry the Seventhe
whose soule God perdon

these personnes followinge
wer commanded by the
kinge to sytte judiciallie as
Comissioners upon the saide
acts of his howse of Assises

The Bysshoppe of Landaf,
The Lorde Broke Steward
of the kinges howse, Syr
Rychard Gylforde Comp-
troller of the same,
Kendall Lorde of Seynt
Johns, Syr John Rylley,
Knight, The clerke of
market Broke.

Text, Center and Lower Right:
Twelve unces and a half conteyneth a pynte of mesure for wheat and wyne y^e same tyme that viii pyntes of wheat maketh y^e gallon for the busshell the w^ch conteyneth iii score & iiii pyntes raysed for a busshell. The same tyme ordeyned iii Barlee cornes maketh an unche iiii wheat graynes qter y^e unche xii unches maketh y^e foote, thre fote maketh the yarde xvi foote and a half maketh the rodde to measure lande by.

The quarte w^ch conteyneth ii pynts in weight xxv unc’. Too pyntes maketh one quarte for wyne and Ale

An⁰. iiii⁰ C^z.iii

Too quarts maketh one pottell for wine & ale w^ch conteyneth iiii li. and ii onces in weight. The cyse of a taverner he shall selle his wynes at a signement of y^e Clerke of y^e market or y^e mayer or hedde officers of y^e towne or Cittie and y^t he excesse not uppon payne of imp’soment that is to saie y^t he sell no secly wyne upon [pain of] sealinge up his doore and his wyne to be cast owt in the strete. And he to gaine in euy gallon white & redde ii in the gallon and iiii^d in all manner of swete wynes And y^t itt be trewlie gaged by y^e officers of y^e towne & y^t it be tasted.

Too pottellis maketh a gallon for wyne and Ale w^ch conteyneth a C. unces of troy viii of thes maketh y^e standerd of wynchester busshell

xx^c weight maketh a Tonne, that is a Carte loade. xl rodde in length maketh an acre and iiii rodde of bredth

Bottom: From the Original Table formerly in the Treasury of the Kings EXCHEQUER at WESTMINSTER, and now preserved in the M.S. LIBRARY of the late EARL of OXFORD. Sumptibus Societ. Antiquariӕ Londini 1746.

Translation:

Banners in the Center, Left Image:
What is Justice?
To live honestly
To repay each his due in both weight and measure
Not to harm others

Banner in the Top, Center Image: Thy righteousness, O Lord, is an everlasting righteousness, and thy law is the truth. / Righteous is yours, O Lord, and upright is thy judgment (Psalm 119 [KJV]: 142, 137).

Text, Center:
All things shall be of equal weight (Exodus 30).
Just balances, just weights, a just ephah and a just hin shall ye have (Leviticus 19).
Thou shalt not have in thy sack divers weights a larger and a lesser. Thou shalt not have in thine house divers measures a great and a small; but thou shalt have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and a just measure shalt thou have (Deuteronomy 25).
[Thou hast disposed everything in measure, number, and weight.] (Wisdom of Solomon 2, [i.e., 11])
Thy righteousness, O Lord, is an everlasting righteousness, and thy law is the truth (Psalm 119).

Commentary by David Shields: Overshadowed in the public imagination by his son, Henry VIII, and his granddaughter, Elizabeth I, Henry VII is often cast as a contradictory and transitional monarch. Neither medieval nor modern, Henry VII’s reign—between the end of the Wars of the Roses with the fall of Richard III at Bosworth Field in 1485 and the broader social, political, and religious renegotiations of the Reformation under Henry VIII after 1509—remains a period of historiographic negotiation, compounded by the relative scarcity of extant documentary evidence compared with that of his successors (Gunn 2007, 301). The Standard of Weights and Measures produced on order of Henry VII in 1497, reproduced by George Vertue on Plate 1.69 in 1746, reveals the scope and degree to which the unification of the kingdom’s economy and the establishment of the administrative state occupied the King’s agenda from the beginning of his reign.

Receipts in the King’s rolls document Henry VII’s keen attention to the circulation of coin and goods within his realm, and his interest in stabilizing, assessing, and taxing commerce and wealth in the kingdom. Although clause 35 of the Magna Carta had prescribed an authoritative standard of weights and measures, systems of commercial exchange had fluctuated in England between 1215 and Henry VII’s coronation in 1485, exacerbated by an increase in import and export with merchants from Paris and Venice. When Henry VII took the throne, markets across England still operated on autonomous and irreconcilable regionally-disparate standards of measurement, arbitrarily indebted to ancient Roman, Norman, and Saxon practices. The variety of standards in use had rendered England’s markets vulnerable not only to competing foreign standards, but also to corruption, coin-clippers, and counterfeiters. From the first days of his reign, Henry VII moved to subdue these competing systems, and the fraudulent exchanges they encouraged, under the King’s authority. Evidence suggests that Henry VII well understood the significance of weights and measures to the stability of his reign. In September 1485, little more than a month after taking the throne by combat from Richard III, Henry VII’s treasury reported payment of 10 pounds sterling to royal founder William Nele “for making certain measures out of the King’s metal called ‘brasse’ according to the accustomed standard, and sending them into each county in the realm” (Campbell 1873, 226). An additional payment to Nele issued from the King’s Treasury the following year suggests the King’s standards had been completed and “sent unto severalle shires and cities of England” (492).

However, these early efforts to standardize the realm’s commercial activity proved inadequate, as Parliament enacted a clarifying statute in 1491, the seventh year of Henry VII’s reign, that “Weights and Measures shall be made of brass and sent to the chief Officers of every city, borough, &c.” (7 Hen. VII C.4.; Great Britain 1811, 757). Parliament elaborated this act in 1495, establishing standards for ratios of bushel to quarter of corn and pound to stone of wool, and prescribing fines and punishments for merchants that continued to use fraudulent measures. These merchants’ false standards would be “broken and burnt, and the Party or Parties which in that Behalf hath offended, and been found defective, shall forfeit for the First Time Six Shillings and Eight-pence” (11 Hen. VII C.4.; Great Britain 1811, 765-66). According to the 1495 statute, fines increased with each violation; after the third offense, offenders would be “set upon the Pillory, to the Example of other,” a brutal punishment carefully illustrated at the center-right of Plate 1.69. The following year, however, the brass standards approved by this act were ordered “damned and burned,” as they had “approved defective, and not made according to the old Laws and Statutes thereof ordained within this said realm” (12 Hen VII C.7.; Great Britain 1811, 787). Likely originating in the confusion of royal artisans between the Saxon commercial pound common to English markets and the Roman avoirdupois, the 1495 standard had established erroneous measures of the gallon and bushel, much to the consternation of merchants and market clerks across the kingdom (Alexander 1857, 73). In response, the revised act of 1496, from which the standard of weights and measures reproduced on Plate 1.69 is modeled, sought to remedy widespread irregularities by asserting the King’s regulatory power, while affirming continuity with long-recognized historical precedents and extant commercial practices.

Before the Society of Antiquaries of London (SAL) commissioned Vertue to produce Plate 1.69, he had composed two portraits of King Henry VII for editions of the popular History of England, by the French writer Paul Rapin de Thoyras (Thoyras 1729, 248-49; Thoyras 1743, 648-49). For the first English edition of Thoyras’s “History of Henry VII” (1729), Vertue represented a simple formal headshot portrait of a solemn and dignified ruler, his regal dispassion expressed in an unsettling avoidance of the viewer’s gaze. Surrounded by little iconography to symbolize his reign, and despite the nearly 200-page biography Thoyras supplies, Vertue’s first portrait of Henry VII seems to only emphasize the transitional King’s inscrutability. For the frontispiece for the third edition, on the other hand, Vertue reproduced a more sophisticated portrait of the King from an “antient Limning in the Royal Collection” (Thoyras 1743, 648-49). In this rendering, like the first edition, Henry VII appears not as a warrior-king, but instead as a mature and stately monarch. However, although the King maintains the distance of his uncanny Royal gaze, he is now accompanied at the periphery by the Red Dragon of Cadwaladr, and two putti holding Tudor roses honor his late wife, Elizabeth of York.

In accord with Sir Francis Bacon’s 1622 biography of the first Tudor King, Thoyras’s text describes Henry VII as a scrupulous monarch determined to unify the country after decades of war and instability. Despite the King’s administrative acumen, however, Thoyras and Bacon both suggest that Henry’s fundamental avarice, abetted by low-born councilors who aggressively seized wealth from English merchants and houses, had earned him a predatory reputation among the peasantry, merchant class, and aristocracy alike (Bacon 1901, 128; Thoyras 1743, 691). Henry’s centralization of power through meticulous administrative expansion, his reliance on non-aristocratic professional allies (soldiers, barristers, and clerks) to enact his agenda, and his massive accumulation of royal wealth continue to inspire scholarly attention into the twenty-first century. Whatever Vertue might have thought in the 1740s of Bacon’s and Thoyras’s biographies, he could hardly have engraved another artifact that more acutely delineated the contradictions and contributions of Henry VII’s reign than the 1497 Standard of Weights and Measures.

If Plate 1.69 illustrated the key historical concerns of Henry VII’s reign, for the SAL in the 1740s, it also intervened in a confluence of ongoing Society programs. As a rare historical object held in an eminent private collection, it certainly warranted preservation by reproduction, particularly in light of the death in 1741 of Vertue’s friend, patron, and fellow SAL member Edward Harley, the second Earl of Oxford and Mortimer, whose collection held the document here depicted. In addition to its value as a historical curiosity, Henry VII’s Standard of Weights and Measures also presented a dated index of data relevant to the Society’s investigation and analysis of English coinage and medals, reflected in the SAL Minute Books, in Plates 1.20, 1.37-1.38, 1.43, 1.55, and 1.56, and in Martin Folkes’s tables of gold and silver coins. In addition, Plate 1.69 sharply illustrates the intersection of history, metrology, and institutional authority that informed not only Henry VII’s reign, but also Folkes’s personal research programs and his fraught presidencies of both the SAL and the Royal Society.

Designed as an official document corresponding both to an act of Parliament and a material standard of brass forged in the Tower of London, Henry VII’s Standard of Weights and Measures was organized into instructive sections of textual description accompanied by graphic illustration. The text blocks are largely derived from the report produced by a Royal Commission composed of privy councilors in Henry VII’s Star Chamber, which had informed Parliament’s 1496 statute (Watson 1910, 60-61). The portraits at the center top of the composition depict King Henry VII, Cardinal John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury, and two other figures receiving divine mandate and measure from the Holy Trinity. Scriptural captions beneath the image denote a Biblical provenance to the standardization of weights and measures and emphasize the equivalence of divine order and the King’s law (Exodus 3:34, Deuteronomy 2:25). Facing the King, the Archbishop performs a benediction gesture, blessing the monarch and his statute, his visage a symbolic presence affirming that both the Lord’s and Henry’s laws demand accurate measure and detest false dealings (Deuteronomy 2:25).

To eighteenth-century antiquaries, however, Cardinal John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor of England during Henry VII’s reign, might have been seen to gesture with predatory purpose. As Bacon observed in his History of the Reign of King Henry VII, the same parliament that had acted to standardize weights and measures in 1491 had also reinstituted statutes of taxation abandoned by Edward IV, which Morton and his colleagues in the King's council mobilized with ruthless enthusiasm. Far from the unifying symbolic role Henry might have intended by the image of his Archbishop and Chancellor in 1497, Bacon notes that instead, Morton was now remembered for his severe tax policy and the calculated rhetorical justification he devised to extract ever more wealth from the King's subjects. “Morton's fork” sought the King's benevolence in every pocket; when tax collectors “met with any that were sparing, they should tell them that they must needs have, because they laid up; and if they were spenders, they must needs have, because it was seen in their port and manner of living” (Bacon 1901, 93). Although the two figures between the King and Archbishop are not explicitly named, their presence at Henry VII’s right hand conjures the King’s notorious councilors Edmund Dudley (c. 1462-1510) and Richard Empson (c. 1450-1510): the architects (along with Morton) of Henry VII’s exacting tax scheme. Dudley and Empson so potently represented the malevolent mechanisms through which Henry VII had accumulated treasure into the King’s wardrobe that Henry VIII imprisoned them in the Tower of London shortly after his father’s death in 1509, and beheaded them at Tower Hill the following year.

Diagrams on each side of the portraits of King, Clergy, councilors, and Trinity highlight the efforts Henry VII undertook not only to standardize measurement, currency, and commercial exchange, but also to reconcile the new royal standard with traditional commercial practices. The plate’s text describes wheat grains as the basic element of Henry VII’s standard of measure: “That is to understande XXXII graynes of wheat taken out of ye middest of ye yeare maketh . . . a penny.” The weight of a grain of wheat, the illustration makes clear, informs both the standard measure of weight used in England, and the corresponding composition of the King’s silver currency. The diagram depicts the wheat grain-weight of a farthing, halfpenny, and penny and establishes the weight of an ounce in both coin (twenty pennies), and wheat grains (640). In addition to its appeal to historical continuity and authority through the use of grain weight, the diagrams’ alignment at the top of the page alongside Henry VII’s divine intercession emphasizes the interconnected authority of the church, the King’s standard weights and measures, and the coinage of the King’s mint.

Conversely, Folkes’s A Table of English Silver Coins from the Norman Conquest to the Present Time (1745) begins its numismatic inquiry with a reflection on the functional disparity between Tower and troy weight that was implicit in Henry VII’s 1497 standard, concluding, “[i]t is most probable that the Pound of the Tower or the Moneyers pound, was also the pound in use before the conquest; and that it continued to be so for a considerable time after, till the Troy pound, perhaps from its greater weight, got the preference by degrees” (Folkes 1745, 3n). Following Folkes, who noted the official conversion to troy weight in the reign of Henry VIII, metrologists have since argued that Henry VII’s Standard of Weights and Measures represents a working standard of the “ancient British pound” rather than the Troy pound (Watson 1910, 62). However, by formalizing an equivalence between ancient practices, the crown’s ‘Tower Standard,’ and troy weight, Henry VII anticipated both the replacement by his son in 1527 of the Tower Pound with the troy, and the administrative actions and enforcement mechanisms that changing the King’s standard would necessitate.

While Henry VII’s gesture to traditional agricultural and commercial systems provided a symbolic historical reference, and his invocation of the Holy Trinity a divine corollary, he had learned from efforts at standardization early in his reign that effective implementation and policing relied not on literal grains of wheat, which vary widely by harvest, but rather on the material solidity of brass weights bearing the King’s stamp, distributed from the Tower of London to cities and towns across England. In this sense, Henry VII’s standard—both the brass weight itself and its illustration on Plate 1.69—shares less with the competing grain-weights of Roman, Norman, and Saxon ancients than with their metrological instruments and numismatic artifacts. In 1877, English Board of Trade Warden of Standards Henry Williams Chisholm (1809-1901) noted that although Henry VII’s 1496 Standard was based on grain-weight derived from French influence after the Conquest (disputing Folkes’s assessment in 1745), no metallic standards were produced for smaller coin denominations like the 32-grain pennyweight until after the troy pound was introduced in England by Henry VIII (Chisholm 1877, 57). This suggests that standards were extrapolated from official ounce and pound weights produced in the Tower, rather than through small, easily-reproduced and manipulated metallic grain-weights, or in the manifest imperfection of wheat grains.

These ancient artifacts, illustrated on Plate 1.69 alongside the coins and medals to which they could be compared, had often invited antiquarian and scientific inquiry. In 1723, for example, SAL Treasurer Samuel Gale (1682-1754) “brought [to the Society] an old fashioned copper box, with many old weights of English Coyns” (SAL Minutes I.93); in 1732, Folkes “brought an account of the English Gold & Silver coins examined by the balance & compared with the standard weight” (I.282). Although numismatics had always inspired antiquarian interest, following Folkes’s election as a member in 1720, the SAL expanded their efforts to analyze and catalogue the history of English coinage, with a particular focus on their weight and composition. However, as Hugh Pagan observes, while the Society’s early ambitions to organize a “Metallographia Britannica” in 1722 and 1724 had failed to materialize, in 1731 Folkes revived the Society’s numismatic project with his own proposed manuscript, to be accompanied by engraved plates by Vertue (Pagan 2003, 158-59). In addition to its relevance as a rare historical artifact, the document depicted here would have afforded antiquaries and numismatists like Folkes an historical locus to triangulate not only investigations into English history and archaeology, but also their ongoing experiments with metrology. In addition to its relevance as a rare historical artifact, the document depicted here would have afforded antiquaries and numismatists an historical locus to triangulate not only investigations into English history and archaeology, but also their ongoing experiments with metrology. The synthesis of historical and scientific inquiry motivated by this project, which the Society termed “Metallographia Britannica” in 1724, would become a consistent source of conflict that marked Folkes’s intellectual and professional reputation.

In addition to his work compiling tables of English coins for the SAL (a sprawling project that the SAL continued after Folkes’s death in 1754), Folkes had researched metrological artifacts and evidence, and had reported to the learned clubs and societies of London and Paris, for over a decade. While on tour in Rome in 1733, Folkes—following the seventeenth-century metrological experiments of Oxford Astronomy professor John Greaves—pursued the authoritative measure of the pes monetalis, or Roman foot. His investigation, published in the 1735-36 edition of the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions, involved comparing compass measurements of Roman standards inscribed at the Capitol with observations of the height of Trajan’s Column using a two-foot standard rule he brought from London (Folkes 1735/6, 262; Roos 2017, 579).

After his election as President of the Royal Society in 1741, Folkes complemented his earlier foreign advocacy of Newtonian optics and English scientific instruments through collaborations with foreign scholars and natural philosophers to analyze and reconcile disparate standards of measurement in Europe. The Royal Society published the results of a comparative study of French and English standards performed by prominent London watch and instrument maker George Graham (1673-1751), an influential supporter of Folkes, about a year after Folkes’s elections both as the Royal Society’s president and as a foreign fellow of the Académie Royale des Sciences in Paris (Royal Society 1742/43, 185). The collaborative metrological experiments between English and French Societies reported in Philosphical Transactions, under Folkes’s presidency of the Royal Society in 1743, echo Henry VII’s 1497 attempt to reconcile Tower and troy on Plate 1.69. As an influential member of the SAL and the Royal Society, Folkes’s dual engagement with metrology and numismatics encouraged the development of a new standard in the mid-eighteenth century, just as the document reproduced on plate 1.69 had done in the fifteenth (Simpson 2004, 322).

Many accounts of Folkes remark on the paucity of extant biographical evidence, and often note that, at his request, his papers were burned upon his death (Rousseau 1999, 380). As a result, what little documentary material remains of Folkes’s legacy points to his twin passions for metrology and numismatics, and his controversial administrative leadership of the Royal Society and the SAL. Folkes’s interest in standards of measurement extended beyond his own interventions in the weights and measures of contemporary England and France, and the metrics of Roman, Norman, and Saxon antiquity, to the standards of ancient Egypt and Biblical Scripture. Reflecting his fascination with the Biblical ‘cubit,’ upon his induction into the short-lived Egyptian Society in 1741, Folkes chose his motto from the Book of Wisdom, 11:21: “omnia in mensura et numero et pondere diposuisti,” (thou has ordered all things in measure and number and weight) (Roos 2017, 578). This text originally appeared on Henry VII’s Standard of Weights and Measures too (beneath the top center image), but it had been worn away from the Harley copy depicted here. Evidence of Folkes’s passion for coins and historical weights and measures appear in the minute books and publications of learned societies, including those of the Royal Society and the SAL. His fascination with metrology, however, was not purely scientific, but also literary and aesthetic. Anna Marie Roos notes that Folkes’s 1733 survey of Trajan’s Column paid particular attention to the artistic rendering of perspective and the aesthetic quality of the figures carved in relief in the column’s spiraling narrative band. In conversation with Venetian polymath Francesco Algarotti (1712-1764), Roos explains, “Folkes was particularly interested in discussing with Algarotti to what extent measurement could answer questions about the relative merits of ancient technology and artistic production” (2017, 580).

Undoubtedly, the document reproduced by Vertue on Plate 1.69 would have piqued Martin Folkes’s interest both in numismatics and metrology, if not also in aesthetics. Ironically, the confluence of historical and scientific inquiry, of material and aesthetic interpretation, invited by artifacts exemplified by Plate 1.69 seem not to reflect Folkes’s synthesizing proto-interdisciplinary methodology, but rather to highlight the institutional divisiveness that his growing influence provoked. The absence of the bulk of Folkes’s papers may sometimes prevent the Newton protégé who simultaneously held the presidencies of the SAL and the Royal Society, and who succeeded, despite hard resistance, in effecting the Society’s charter of incorporation in 1751, from speaking on his own behalf (Rousseau 1999, 378). As a result, the most visible indices of Folkes’s biography are primary documents written by his contemporaries that describe the contentious transitional periods he managed in the Royal Society and the SAL. Some of these texts often suggest not only that some of his colleagues associated with each London Society suspected Folkes of privileging the other group’s agenda, but also that his antiquarian interest in historical interpretation and his scientific interest in rigorous experimentation were fundamentally at odds. An implied rebuke to Folkes’s tenure of the SAL and Royal Society presidencies, the introduction to the first volume of the former society’s learned journal, Archaeologia, articulates the latter position outright, reflecting on the “[s]everal attempts [that] were made to unite [the SAL] to the Royal Society, notwithstanding the obvious difference in their pursuits; the one being limited by their Institution and Charter to the Improvement of Natural Knowledge, the other to the Study of History and Antiquities” (Gough 1770, xxxviii). Although Folkes may have imagined his research as unifying these “differen[t] pursuits,” the SAL of 1770 insisted on their fundamental incompatibility.

Such criticisms also cling to Folkes through the publication in 1750 of caustic attacks on the Royal Society under Folkes’s administration, written by John Hill (1714-75). Although the Royal Society’s denial of Hill’s membership had likely fueled the vitriol of his satirical attacks, which are explicitly directed at Folkes (Hill’s A Review of the works of the Royal Society [1751] honors Folkes with a sharply-personal, mocking dedication), his harsh critiques contained kernels of truth that did not escape some of Folkes’s colleagues at the Royal Society and the SAL, including Vertue and former SAL secretary William Stukeley (1687-1765). As G.S. Rousseau and David Haycock observe, “[t]here is no doubt that Stukeley shared some of Hill's criticisms of the Royal Society and its president” (1999, 395). While a diary entry penned after Folkes’s death in 1754 suggests that Stukeley’s institutional criticisms, echoing Hill’s, were couched in personal animus—he describes Folkes as “[having] a great deal of learning, philosophy, astronomy: but knows nothing of natural history. In matters of religion an errant infidel and loud scoffer” (Stukeley 1882, 100)—Vertue and others voiced more material concerns about Folkes’s determination to press for the Society’s incorporation. After a 1750 debate about the Society’s charter, Vertue expressed his frustration that incorporation was motivated by “Royal Society schemers,” which included Folkes, but he had noted his suspicions as early as 1729 that SAL members were angling to merge the two ‘sister’ societies (Rousseau 1999, 383-84). While no definitive evidence proves Folkes’s intention to merge the SAL and the Royal Society, or to effectively subsume an independent SAL under the mandate of its more-established sister, the hybridity of his work stoked suspicions within both groups of their president’s inadequacy. Tellingly, these criticisms often stung Folkes from both sides; whereas Hill questioned Folkes’s scientific rigor, Stukeley commended the president’s scientific skill, but found him lacking in historical acumen. Regardless, the tensions surrounding Folkes’s influence over the Royal Society and the SAL seem never too far removed from his dual—often overlapping—investments in historical and scientific projects.

No documentary evidence suggests that the SAL perceived the image reproduced on Plate 1.69 in relation to the controversies surrounding Martin Folkes’s influence and ambition. However, when considered in the contexts of Henry VII’s sparse biography, his legacy as construed by his critics and competitors, and his persistent concern with weights and measures, Plate 1.69 invokes a natural kinship between the inscrutable King and the life and work of Martin Folkes. Whether Folkes's fellow SAL members also saw the irony in presenting Henry VII’s effort to bring once-autonomous institutions under the crown’s purview in light of their own contested bid for royal incorporation, is unknown. Folkes’s reaction to this plate, and in particular the possibility that he saw in Henry VII’s actions an historical analogy to his own determination to secure incorporation and formally institutionalize the SAL, may forever lie buried in the ashes of the papers destroyed upon his death. Regardless, contemporary viewers can easily detect in Plate 1.69 not only a rare artifact of Henry VII’s rule and an index of metrological and numismatic data, but also a potent metaphor for the turbulent state of the two ‘sister’ Societies that Martin Folkes managed through radical transition.

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Stukeley, William. 1882. The Family Memoirs of the Rev. William Stukeley, M.D. and the Antiquarian and other Correspondence of William Stukeley, Roger & Samuel Gale. Vol. 1. Edited by William C. Lukis. Durham: Andrews & Co.

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Kinds of Monuments in Vetusta Monumenta By Noah Heringman

Vetusta Monumenta is a miscellaneous series by any standard, presenting monuments that range in date from the second to the seventeenth century CE and in size from a half-groat to a castle. Martin Myrone has noted the positive and negative aspects of this enormous range: “Viewed as a serial publication, the Vetusta Monumenta was, depending on one’s point of view, enormously flexible and responsive … or simply incoherent” (2007, 103). This heterogeneity can be vexing to modern readers trained in more specialized disciplines, but it also facilitates a new kind of engagement with the cultural past: the antiquarian idea of antiquity was a capacious one, in some ways more so than ideas that are current today.

The remit of the Society of Antiquaries of London (SAL) was originally defined as “Brittish Antiquitys” in the Articles of Incorporation drawn up by William Stukeley in 1717; to judge from Stukeley’s own contributions to Vetusta Monumenta, this field extended from the map of Roman Verulamium (Plate 1.7) to medieval built works such as the eleventh-century Bishop’s Chapel at Hereford (Plate 1.49) and Waltham Cross (Plate 1.8), erected in the late thirteenth century. When John Fenn classified the contents of the first two volumes of Vetusta Monumenta in 1784, he narrowed the field to pre-Conquest monuments, subdivided into British, Roman, Saxon, and Danish Antiquities, but then identified six additional categories of monuments, mainly medieval and post-medieval: II. Coins, Medals, and Seals; III. Castles, Palaces, Gates, Crosses; IV. Abbeys, Churches, [and related architectural features]; V. Portraits; VI. Historic Prints and Processions; VII. Plans, Maps, and Miscellaneous (Fenn 1784, 18).

I. Antiquities (British, Roman, Saxon, Danish):

All but two of the sixteen plates listed by Fenn in this category are dedicated to Roman Britain, though one of these has since been recognized as medieval (Plate 1.1). The only item under “British antiquities” is Plate 2.20, which features bronze instruments found in Ireland, along with an Iron Age shield from Shropshire. The item under Danish Antiquities is the “Horn of Ulf” engraved in 1718 (Plate 1.2). The first and only Saxon monument recorded in Vetusta Monumenta in the eighteenth century, Ruthwell Cross (Plates 2.54-2.55), was engraved in 1789, postdating Fenn’s index. The only other additions to the whole class of “antiquities” after Fenn are three more Roman mosaic pavements: Plates 2.43, 2.44, and 3.39. The overwhelming majority of the plates engraved after George Vertue’s death in 1756 (most of them by James Basire Sr) represent Gothic architecture, an emphasis which in turn demonstrates the influence of the medievalist Richard Gough, the director of the SAL during much of this time.

For more on the engravings documenting Roman Britain, see “Vetusta Monumenta and Britain’s Classical Past,” written specially for this edition by Sarah Scott.

II. Coins, Medals, and Seals:

In the 1720s, members of the SAL began planning a history of British coinage, to be titled Metallographia Britannica, and subcommittees were appointed to supervise the recording of Roman, Saxon, Danish, and English coins. Like many early projects of the SAL, this one crumbled under the weight of its own ambition, but a number of side projects, including several plates in the first volume of Vetusta Monumenta, provide evidence of repeated attempts over about four decades. Crystal B. Lake and David Shields provide a detailed account of this attempted history of coinage in their commentaries on Plates 1.55, 1.56, and 1.69. Plate 1.56 concludes a four-part series of plates featuring coins (Plates 1.37-1.38, 1.43, and 1.56), and Plate 1.55 features a number of medals not otherwise accommodated by the series. Plate 1.20, engraved considerably earlier, was updated several times to reflect the progress of the Society’s efforts in this area. All these plates show medieval and early modern coins. Many Roman coins were exhibited at meetings of the SAL from the very beginning, but neither these nor the Saxon and Danish coins are visible in the print series.

Fenn’s index shows a more sustained engagement with seals, which are featured in each of the first three volumes. In addition to Plates 1.5, 1.28-1.33, 1.53-1.54, 1.58-60, 2.7, 2.19, and 2.36 (all listed by Fenn), seals are also featured on Plates 3.26-3.30. In addition, as noted by Fenn, facsimiles of certain documents are included at least in part because of the seals attached to them, including Plates 1.62, 2.4, and 2.6. George Vertue, who engraved all but two of the first 87 plates in the series, collected coins himself and used this subset of prints to make a study of arts historically related to his own art of copper engraving, including seal engraving and the even older art of creating the dies from which coins were struck.

For more on medieval seals and Vetusta Monumenta, see the “Introduction to Medieval Seals and the Growth of Sigillography,” written specially for this edition by Laura Whatley.

III. Castles, Palaces, Gates, and Crosses:
IV. Abbeys; Churches and Chapels; Tombs and Shrines; Fonts and Windows:

It is less than clear why Fenn subdivided the architectural plates in Vetusta Monumenta in this particular way, though the large total number of architectural subjects certainly helps to account for these numerous subdivisions. As these subcategories suggest, a large majority of the subjects are medieval, ranging in date from the eleventh through the early fifteenth century. Some Tudor and Stuart monuments are also included, and the only font in Volume I is actually the most recent antiquity in the whole set, Grinling Gibbons’s marble font in St. James’s, Piccadilly (Plate 1.3). Three medieval fonts were engraved for the series by Basire in 1785 and 1793 (Plates 2.39-2.40 and 3.25).

Fully eight of the castles listed by Fenn were engraved by Vertue from Elizabethan drawings of castles from the office of the Duchy of Lancaster, all of which were in ruins or entirely destroyed before the eighteenth century. Only Colchester Castle (Plates 1.35-1.36) was depicted in its then-current state. Five plates of Hedingham Castle, Essex, were added in 1796 (Plates 3.40-3.44). The creators of the series turned more attention to palaces after 1750, including the Savoy (Plates 2.5, 2.12, and 2.14) and the royal palaces of Richmond (2.23-2.24), Placentia (2.25), and Hampton Court (2.27). Beaulieu or New Hall, Essex (2.41-2.42), was added in 1786. The subset of Gates and Crosses includes a mix of religious and secular built works, including the monumental St. Benet’s Abbey gate (1.13-1.14) and the Eleanor Cross at Waltham (1.7), on the one hand, and, on the other, two gates built by Henry VIII for Whitehall Palace (Plates 1.17-19), along with four market crosses (Plates 1.61, 1.64, 2.8, 2.10)—though of course the market cross presents a nexus of religious iconography and commercial space. Waltham Cross became the first and only monument to be engraved twice for Vetusta Monumenta, appearing for the second time in 1790 when Basire engraved it from a new drawing by Jacob Schnebbelie as part of a plate set comprising six of the Eleanor Crosses (Plates 3.12-3.17). Yet another cross engraved for the series was Ruthwell Cross (Plates 2.54-55), mentioned above as a “Saxon antiquity.”

For more on castles, palaces, gates, crosses and Vetusta Monumenta, see the essay “Castles, Palaces, Gates, Crosses,'” written specially for this edition by Katharina Boehm. The pairing of gates and crosses seems less intuitive than the pairing of castles and palaces, but since at least some monuments in each group are secular, the group as a whole may be distinguished from Fenn’s fourth class, which comprises only religious structures.

Fenn’s Class IV, with its seven subcategories, comprises the largest set of engravings on his list, including twenty-four plates dedicated to fourteen monuments. The largest plate set in the group and in the whole series (Plates 2.29-2.35) features seven plates of funerary monuments in Westminster Abbey, in which the interest in abbeys converges with the interest in tombs and shrines. The engravings by Basire are based on preparatory drawings traditionally attributed to his apprentice William Blake, though that attribution is now in doubt. Another monument in Westminster Abbey, the Shrine of Edward the Confessor, had been published quite early in the series (Plate 1.16). Sepulchral monuments, as Gough called them in the title of a large work he published under his own name (1786-96), became a special focus for the series in the 1780s, with engravings of three massive monuments in Winchester Cathedral, the monument of Edward IV at Windsor Castle, and others. Walsingham, Fountains, and Furness Abbeys, “majestic though in ruin,” were all featured in Volume I, along with the newly demolished chapel at the Bishop’s Palace in Hereford. The subcategories of fonts and windows are represented by only one monument each on Fenn’s list, though three more fonts were added later, as already mentioned; the east window of St. Margaret’s, Westminster remains the only window, though of course windows appear in many of the plates of churches in Volumes II-III—seven all told, ranging in size from Magdalen Chapel, Winchester to Lincoln Minster (other cathedrals were engraved for the separate cathedral series launched by the SAL in the 1790s). No other abbeys are featured in Volumes II-III, however.

Fenn’s admittedly capacious list of religious structures points toward a powerful interest in medieval ecclesiastical architecture that would only increase in the last two decades on the eighteenth century.

V. Portraits:

Fenn includes eight portraits in his list, but not all of these are ancient. In the commentaries in this edition there is a special focus on the portraits of modern antiquaries (Plates 1.45, 1.66, 2.3, and 2.28), which Fenn groups somewhat incongruously with historic portraits of Richard II (Plate 1.4) and the twelfth-century monk Eadwin of Canterbury (Plate 2.16). The portraits of antiquaries are of particular interest here because collectively they tell a story about the history of antiquarianism, linking the eighteenth-century SAL genealogically to the Elizabeth Society of Antiquaries by including Robert Cotton (1571-1631) along with the eighteenth-century antiquaries Thomas Tanner, George Holmes, and Charles Lyttelton (all of whom are honored by engraved portraits in the series shortly after their deaths). Intriguingly, Fenn also includes the two portrait medals of Queen Elizabeth (Plate 1.20) in this category, along with a whole series of portraits by Vertue that were reissued separately from Vetusta Monumenta. Lyttelton’s portrait in 1770 (Plate 2.28) was the last to appear in the series itself.

For more on these portrait prints, see the “Portraits in Vetusta Monumenta,” written specially for this edition by Rosemary Sweet.

VI. Historic Prints and Processions:

Only one entry from Vetusta Monumenta appears under this heading in Fenn’s list, the plate set devoted to Henry VIII’s Westminster Tournament Roll of 1510 (Plates 1.21-1.26). As Crystal B. Lake shows in her commentary on that plate set, Vertue is equally concerned to document the medial form of these images, the spectacularly long vellum roll painted with colorful chivalric figures, a virtual procession to rival the tournament itself. Although it does not apply broadly to Vetusta Monumenta, Fenn’s classification remains useful because it places this series in the context of another important publication series of the SAL, the Historical Prints series that ran from 1774-1781, in which Basire’s engraving of the “Field of the Cloth of Gold” is perhaps the most famous entry.

VII. Plans, Maps, and Miscellaneous Prints:

It might be said that Fenn ran out of steam at this point in his classification project, or perhaps the final “Miscellaneous” grouping (VII.2) had to be created for those five plates that just wouldn’t fit anywhere else. Volume I, in fact, includes two maps of Roman Britain: both Stukeley’s map of Verulamium (Plate 1.8) and Francis Drake’s Plan of the Roman Roads in Yorkshire (Plate 1.47), which is (oddly) overlooked by Fenn. The two plan plates listed by Fenn—a plan of the Tower Liberties from 1597 (Plate 1.63) and three plans for rebuilding London after the Great Fire of 1666 (Plates 2.1-2.2)—are both quite modern and are quite similar in style and approach.

For more on the subject of maps and plans, see “Maps and Plans in Vetusta Monumenta,” specially written for this edition by Elizabeth Baigent.

Fenn’s “miscellaneous” antiquities—an arbitrary and incomplete subset, but nonetheless indicative—comprise fragments of the Cotton Genesis MS after it was decimated by the Cotton Library fire of 1731 (1.67-1.68); the exechequer’s Standard of Weights and Measures, an exquisitely illuminated black-letter manuscript from the reign of Henry VII (Plate 1.69); two medieval bronze bells, which even to Fenn do not seem to fit with the Roman bronze objects with which Vertue grouped them (Plate 2.17); a medieval mantelpiece from Saffron Waldon (Plate 2.19); and curiously, the 1747 title page and catalogue from Volume I of Vetusta Monumenta itself.

Works Cited:

Fenn, John. 1784. “An Index to the Prints Published by the Society of Antiquaries.” In Three Chronological Tables, Exhibiting a State of the Society of Antiquaries, 17-30. London: J. Nichols.

Gough, Richard. 1786-1796. Sepulchral Monuments in Great Britain. London: J. Nichols.

Myrone, Martin. “The Society of Antiquaries and the Graphic Arts.” In Visions of Antiquity: The Society of Antiquaries of London, 1707-2007, edited by Susan Pearce, 98-121. London: The Society of Antiquaries.

Stukeley, William. 1717. “Articles of Incorporation.” Society of Antiquaries of London, Manuscripts MS 265. [SAL Minutes, Vol. 1].
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