Plate 1.20: Medals of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Elizabeth I, and James I
Thomas Serjeant brought the Armada Medal (Object 3) to the Society’s meeting on 24 February 1725 (SAL Minutes I.144). Lord Hertford (1684-1750) presented the Phoenix Badge (Object 5) later that year, on 19 May 1725 (I.161). On 27 April 1726, Johann Jakob Scheuchzer (1672-1733) brought the Phoenix Jewel (Object 4) to the Society’s meeting, and William Stukeley (1687-1765) “proposed it might be engraved on our plate of Q. Eliz” (I.190). Lord Hertford exhibited the Coronation Medal of Edward VI (Object 2) on 29 March 1727, when “it was balloted and agreed” that it “be engraved” (I.206). The Medal of James I was first shown by Scheuchzer at an SAL meeting on 17 November 1725 (I.174), but it was balloted for engraving on 12 April 1727 (I.207). Browne Willis (1682-1760) exhibited the silver crown of Henry VIII (Object 1) on 11 February 1731 (I.265). Two weeks later William Bogdani “proposed that Mr Willis’s Crown Piece of Henry the 8th att the Expence of the Society be engraven by Mr Vertue on the plate of coins over King Edward the 6th” (I.265). The composition of the plate, with the coronation medal centered in the upper half and the silver crown very near the top margin, seems to confirm that it was added at this date.
It’s possible that Vertue was mistaken in his list of 1740 about the timeline for engravings he had produced more than fifteen years earlier. It is perhaps more likely that he made existing engravings available to the SAL and updated them periodically, as suggested by some of the minute book entries quoted above. Two other prints depicting selected objects also appearing on this print (Plate 1.20)—and clearly attributable to Vertue—may document earlier iterations of the copperplate used for this impression (see, for example: RCIN 600977 and Collection 1740, 2:123). The minutes also record that Vertue was “orderd . . . to print 150 of the plate of the English medals” on 14 May 1727 (SAL Minutes I.211). All things considered, it seems likely that the stated publication date of 1725 refers to an early state, before it was decided to add the Phoenix Jewel to the lower half and (later) the silver crown to the upper half of the composition.
Objects:
1. Silver Crown of Henry VIII (c. 1545) from the collection of Browne Willis. This coin is currently located at the University of Oxford as part of Willis’s bequest.
2. Coronation Medal of Edward VI (1547) from the collection of Samuel Mead. An example of this medal is currently in the British Museum (G3,EM.1), but the current location of Mead’s medal is unknown.
3. Armada Medal of Elizabeth I (c. 1588), also known as the “Dangers Averted Medal” and a unique enameled example from the collection of Henry Hoare. An example of this medal is currently in the British Museum (M.6903), but the current location of Hoare’s unique example is unknown.
4. The Phoenix Jewel (c. 1574) from the collection of Sir Hans Sloane. The Phoenix Jewel is currently in the British Museum (SLMisc.1778).
5. Inscription from The Phoenix Badge (c. 1574) from the collection of Sir Hans Sloane, with faint outlines of its obverse and reverse designs. An example is in the British Museum (1927,0404.3).
6. Medal of James I, Commemorating the Peace with Spain (1604) from the collection of Sir Hans Sloane. A gold example of this medal is currently in the British Museum (1844,0425.24), but the location of the silver example here engraved is unknown.
Transcription:
Silver Crown of Henry VIII (c. 1545):
Label: Moneta Argentea Anglice Crown piece / penes Browne Willis Armig.
Obverse: HENRIC 8 DEI GRACIA ANGLIE FRANCI [&] HIBERN REX
Reverse: ANGLICE [&] HIBERNICE ECCLESIE SVPREMVM CAPVT
Coronation Medal of Edward VI (1547):
Label: penes Sam. Mead I.ctm
Obverse, Outer Circle: EDWARDVS VI D G ANG FR E HI REX FIDEI DEFNS
Obverse, Center Circle: E IN TERRIS ANG E HIB ECCLE CAPVT SVPREMVM
Obverse, Inner Circle: CORONATVS EST MDXLVI XX FEBRVA ETATIS DECIMO
Reverse: ΕΔΟΡΔΟΣ O EKTOΣ O THI TOΥ ΘΕΟΥ XAPITI THΣ AΓΓΛΙΑΣ ΦPAΓΧΙΑΣ TE KAI IBEINIAΣ BAΣIΛΕΥΣ THΣ ΠΙΣΤΕΩΣ ΠΡΟΣΤΑΤΗΣ, KAI THΣ EN ΓΗΙ EKKΛΗΣΙΑΣ AΓΓΛΙΚΗΣ KAI IBEPNIXHΣ H ΠΡΩΤΗ KEΦAΛΗ ΣΤΕΦΑΝΩΘΕΙΣ ΕΤΕΙ. X.
At the Center of the Print: Sumptibus Societatis Antiquariӕ Londinensis.
Armada Medal of Elizabeth I (c. 1588):
Label: Auro hoc Encaustus depingitur ELISABETHAE / Vultus; Materiem nobile vincit Opus. / penes Henr. Hoare, Ar.
Obverse: DITIOR IN TOTO NON ALTER CIRCVLVS ORBE
Reverse: NON IPSA PERICVLA TANGVNT
The Phoenix Jewel (c. 1574):
Label: penes D.m Hañs Sloan Barñt.
Inscription from The Phoenix Badge (c. 1574):
Obverse, Outer Circle: HEI MIHI QVOD TANTO VIRTVS PERFVSA DECORE NON HABET ETERNOS INVIOLATA DIES
Obverse, Inner Circle: ELIZABETHA D G ANG FR ET HIB REGINA
Reverse, Outer Circle: FELICES ARABES MVNDI QVIBVS VNICA PHŒNIX PHŒNICEM REPARAT DEPEREVNDO NOVAM
Reverse, Inner Circle: O MISEROS ANGLOS MVNDI QVIBVS VNICA PHŒNIX VLTIMA FIT NOSTRO TRISTIA FATA SOLO
Medal of James I, Commemorating the Peace with Spain (1604):
Obverse: IACOBVS D G ANG SCO FR ET HIB REX
Reverse: HINC PAX COPIA CLARAQ RELIGIO
At the Bottom of the Print: Sumpt Societatis Antiquariӕ Lond:
Translation:
Silver Crown of Henry VIII (c. 1545):
Label: Silver English Coin Crown Piece / From the collection of Browne Willis, Esquire
Obverse: Henry VIII by the grace of God King of England, France, and Ireland
Reverse: Supreme head of the Church of England and Ireland
Coronation Medal of Edward VI (1547):
Label: From the collection of Samuel Mead, Lawyer of the Middle Temple
Obverse, Outer Circle : Edward VI by the grace of God King of England, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith
Obverse, Center Circle: And supreme Head of the Church in England and Ireland
Obverse, Inner Circle: He was crowned 20 February 1546/7 in his tenth (year of age).
Reverse: [Greek and Hebrew translation of text on obverse]
Armada Medal of Elizabeth I (c. 1588):
Label: This encaustic work of Elizabeth’s face is painted with gold. The noble work transcends the medium. / from the collection of Henry Hoare, Esquire
Obverse: No other circle in the whole world more rich
Reverse: Not even dangers affect it
The Phoenix Jewel (c. 1574):
Label: From the collection of Sir Hans Sloan, Baronet
Inscription from The Phoenix Badge (c. 1574):
Obverse, Outer Circle: Alas, that virtue, endued with so much dignity, does not enjoy perpetual life uninjured
Obverse, Inner Circle: Elizabeth, by the grace of God, Queen of England, France, and Ireland
Reverse, Outer Circle: Fortunate Arabs whose only Phœnix reproduces a new Phœnix by dying
Reverse, Inner Circle: Wretched English whose only Phœnix becomes its last, an unhappy fate in our country
Medal of James I, Commemorating the Peace with Spain (1604):
Obverse: James, by the grace of God, King of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland
Reverse: Hence peace, plenty, and plain religion
At the Bottom of the Print: Published by the Society of Antiquaries, London.
Commentary by Crystal B. Lake: Along with Plates 1.37-1.38, 1.43, 1.55, 1.56, 1.62, and 1.69, Plate 1.20 reflects the importance of numismatic objects for eighteenth-century antiquaries. As John Evelyn (1620-1706) put it in his influential Numismata, antiquaries recognized coins and medals as the most “lasting” and “Vocal Monuments of Antiquity” (1697, 1). Other antiquities—such as “pyramids” and similarly “enormous heaps of Stones”—were “mute” because they usually lacked inscriptions and were thereby incapable of conveying “by whom” or “to what end they were erected” (1). Moreover, as Evelyn points out, many antiquities had simply disappeared. Sculptures had crumbled, the “Pictures and Colours” of historical artworks had inevitably “fade[d],” and “many Conflagrations,” “Accidents,” “Wars,” and “Fanatick Zeal” had damaged or destroyed books and manuscripts (1-2). In contrast, coins and medals “seem to have broken and worn out the very Teeth of Time, that devours and tears in pieces all things else” (2).
Stamped on metal and often featuring inscriptions that could be used to date the objects and identify the occasions of their production as well as the figures they depicted, coins and medals preserved information that other antiquities did not. Throughout the long eighteenth century, antiquaries turned to coins and medals not only to discover “the very Names as well as Actions of many famous Persons” who would be otherwise “unknown to the present,” but also to date significant events and document geopolitical developments—and, by examining their imagery, recover details regarding historical dress, architecture, customs, and symbolism (2). For members of the Society of Antiquaries of London (SAL), as for Evelyn, numismatic objects had “outlasted the most antient Records, and transmitted to us the knowledge of a thousand useful things of twice a thousand years past” (2).
The presence of one coin on Plate 1.20—the silver crown of Henry VIII (c. 1545), at the top—connects this plate with the Society’s attempts to produce a comprehensive account of British coinage that would reliably convey the wide range of historical information that, according to numismatists like Evelyn, coins and medals uniquely provided. When the SAL was revived in 1707, “An Historical account of the Coin” was listed as one of the primary projects the Society should pursue (Gough 1770, xxix). The minutes record that in 1721/2 “it was propos’d it would be much for the honour of the Kingdom, particularly of the Society, to attempt a Compleat description and history of all the Coyns relating to Great Britain from the Earliest times to our own” (SAL Minutes I.112). As Rogers Ruding ([1817] 1840, 1:xi) and Joan Evans (1956, 72) both document, the SAL divvied up the numismatic research that needed to be done for such a project among its members. William Stukeley was assigned to study the British coins in Sir Hans Sloane’s (1660-1753) cabinet, while George Holmes (1662-1749) was assigned the Saxon coins in James Hill’s (1697-1727) possession—and Hill, the Saxon coins in the Harley collection; Roger Gale (1672-1744) assumed responsibility for the Roman coins “which relate to Britain,” his brother, Samuel Gale (1682-1754), “those of the Danish reigns,” and Peter Le Neve (1661-1729) agreed to survey English coins dating “from the Conquest” (Ruding [1817] 1840, 1.xi).
However, the Metallographia Britannica project stalled almost immediately. Only Stukeley managed to “[produce] anything substantive”; his Twenty-Three Plates of the Coins of the Ancient British Kings that resulted from his numismatic research would be published posthumously in 1765 (Roos 2021, 186-87). Nonetheless, the objects here on Plate 1.20, especially those from Sloane’s collection that the SAL assigned to Stukeley in 1721/2, likely came to the Society’s attention as a consequence of the Metallographia Britannica project. Under the influence of Maurice Johnson (1688-1755), the founder of the Gentleman’s Society at Spalding who frequently corresponded with members of the SAL, they renewed the Metallographia Britannica in 1724 and, again, formed committees for its completion. According to John Nichols, Johnson conceived of the idea of dividing “all the Legends and accounts of Coins that relate to Britain into five areas” (1815, 6.157). The Society’s minutes confirm that five committees were re-established for the project in 1724; Stukeley was again assigned to lead the committee tasked with collecting information relative to British coinage, now with the assistance of Lord Winchilsea (1657-1726); Roger Gale was likewise re-assigned to Roman coins, with Robert Ainsworth (1660-1743) nominated to assist him; Humfrey Wanley (1672-1726) took over the Saxon for Hill, whose health was failing; Samuel Gale (1682-1754) remained at the helm for researching Danish coins; Lord Hertford, then President of the SAL, along with William Nicolson (1655-1727) and one “Mr. Crayke” (SAL Minutes I.114) joined Le Neve in the study of English coinage after the Norman Conquest. Again, however, the Metallographia Britannica failed to come to fruition.
Evans’s history of the SAL finds a general “want of spirit” among members of the Society in the 1720s, but their plan for a comprehensive history of British coinage seems to have been too vast, in terms of assembling the necessary objects as well as arranging, dating, illustrating, and explicating them, ever to be completed (1956, 79). Although the Metallographia Britannica project was never finished under the terms of its original conceptualization, displaying and discussing numismatic specimens was a constant aspect of the Society’s meetings throughout the first half of the eighteenth century. Hugh Pagan has found that “[b]etween 1719 and 1753 there were some 630 exhibits of coins and medals at Society meetings, involving the display of well over 1000 individual coins and medals” (2015, 369).
In 1732, the SAL abandoned the Metallographia Britannica as it had originally been conceived in favor of pursuing fellow Martin Folkes’s (1690-1754) plan for the history of English coinage based on his interests in metrology (Evans 1956, 95-96; Pagan 2015, 158; Roos 2021, 187-89). Whereas Plates 1.37-1.38 and 1.69 reflect the influence of Folkes’s metrological preoccupations, Plate 1.20 demonstrates the Society’s commitment to preserving especially rare antiquities by engraving them (as do many other prints in Vetusta Monumenta) and reflects Johnson’s 1724 recommendation that members of the SAL should pay particular attention to inscriptions. Likewise, Plate 1.20 exemplifies the continuing influence of numismatists like Evelyn, who understood coins and medals to be capable of conveying a wide range of information about the past for the benefit of the present.
Accordingly, Plate 1.20 constitutes a record of not only the rare or singular objects that came under the SAL’s purview in the course of their members’ ongoing numismatic research but also a record of political developments in British history. This is not to say that Plate 1.20 advances a strong polemical narrative; rather, as Rosemary Sweet explains and other prints in Vetusta Monumenta show—see, especially, Plates 1.28-1.33, 1.62, 1.70, and 2.6—“[t]he political and religious conflicts of the seventeenth century had highlighted how history could be written, rewritten and distorted for political ends. Antiquaries considered that artefacts offered a stronger foundation of truth” (2004, 14). Antiquaries valued numismatic objects, in particular, as “monumental evidence” that could advance “stronger claims to authenticity than written texts, which were more easily forged, and were frequently generated in partisan circumstances,” and so they turned to coins and medals to “confirm passages of history that were true, settle those which were ambiguous and record those passages which have been omitted” (14). In the context of Plate 1.20, the specific histories conveyed by the objects include the terms on which the monarchy styled itself in the contexts of the Reformation, the relationship between Spain and England beginning with the defeat of the Spanish of Armada in 1588 and concluding with the Treaty of London in 1604, and the union between England and Scotland.
Finally, Plate 1.20 also reflects the interest members of the Society took—especially Vetusta Monumenta’s primary engraver, George Vertue—in not just the histories recorded on coins and medals but also the histories of art, design, and craftsmanship evinced by coins and medals. Like the artists and craftspeople who executed coins and medals, Vertue worked in metallic media, and, as David Alexander notes, has been recognized “as a pioneer of the study of historical portraiture” (2008, 207). All of the objects appearing on the bottom half of the print have been linked (although not always conclusively) to the work of the Elizabethan portrait miniaturist, Nicholas Hilliard (c. 1547-1619): an early modern artist of particular interest to Vertue. Although Hilliard’s hand in the creation of the objects featured on Plate 1.20 is uncertain in some cases and may not have been explicitly known to Vertue or other members of the SAL at the time of the print’s publication, the numismatic objects assembled on the page are remarkable for the quality of their portraiture—as well as their design and craftsmanship.
Silver Crown of Henry VIII (c. 1545):
As part of this SAL’s ongoing interest in developing a comprehensive history of British coinage, Browne Willis exhibited the silver crown of Henry VIII depicted here at the top of Plate 1.20 to the Society on 11 February 1731 (SAL Minutes I.265)—around the same time that Folkes took over the Metallographia Britannica project. The minutes contain a rough drawing of the coin. Vertue’s personal records suggest, however, that Henry VIII’s silver crown may have come to his and other SAL members’ attention seven years before Willis exhibited it at a Society meeting: in 1725, the year Vertue assigns to his engraving of not only a “Crown peice [sic] of K. H. 8. silver” but also a “Medal of King Edward 6th in Gold,” Medals of Qu Elisabeth. [sic] in gold,” and “King James I/ Medal” in the list of prints he prepared for Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford and Mortimer, in 1740 (Alexander 2008, 308). Since William Bogdani explicitly proposed in February 1731 that the crown piece be added to the plate containing the coronation medal (SAL Minutes I.265), and the composition of the upper half of the print (apparently a separate plate) bears this out, the 1725 date must refer to an earlier state of the plate.
Nevertheless, when Folkes took over the Metallographia Britannica project, he hired Vertue (who had been the SAL’s official engraver since 1717) to begin examining the coins known to be in antiquaries’ private collections throughout England, including especially those in Willis’s cabinet, in order to identify items he might engrave for Folkes’s planned numismatic project (Roos 2021, 187). Accordingly, Willis’s silver crown would not only appear here on Plate 1.20 of Vetusta Monumenta but also feature later in Folkes’s Table of English Silver Coins (1745, 26). Willis is well known for his work on England’s cathedrals; he is less well known for his numismatic research. In her affectionate description of his eccentric character, Catherine Talbot notes that along with “one of the honestest hearts in the world,” Willis had “one of the oddest heads that ever dropped out of the moon. Extremely well versed in coins, he knows hardly any thing of mankind” (quoted in Nichols 1815, 6.205). In 1733 Willis published his own numismatic document, A Table of The Gold Coins of the Kings of England, based on his personal collection—and, according to Nichols, he was responsible for the “making” of Plates 1.37-1.38, which were published in 1731, the same year he exhibited the silver crown here on Plate 1.20 to the SAL (6.198).1
In 1741, Willis donated his entire cabinet of English coins, “at that time looked upon as the most complete collection in England,” to Oxford University, with the stipulation that it be displayed and visited annually on the 19th of October (Nichols 1815, 6.191). Willis’s collection is still at Oxford and includes the silver crown depicted here (Loveday 1905). The crown remains notable as one of the earliest examples of its kind and as an illustration of Henry VIII’s fraught attempts to manage the nation’s finances by minting new coins and adjusting their valuation (Loveday 1905). In this way, the crown may speak to the Society's interests in debasement and examples of new coinages (see also Plates 1.37-1.38 and 1.56 of Vetusta Monumenta). Additionally, Willis’s silver crown of Henry VIII was engraved alongside the Coronation Medal of Edward VI—and both items appeared together on a stand-alone print (see, for example: RCIN 600977). Pairing the silver crown of Henry VIII with the Coronation Medal of Edward VI highlighted the history of their shared inscriptions, which would likewise have implications for Plate 1.62 (discussed below).
Coronation Medal of Edward VI (1547):
The SAL minutes report that Lord Hertford, then the Society’s President, exhibited a “fine Coronation Medal of Edward VI in gold very large” to the SAL on 29 March 1727, and “it was balloted and agreed that the Gold Medal of Edward the Sixth be engraved” (SAL Minutes I.206). As is the case with the silver crown of Henry VIII appearing above this object on the print, however, Vertue may have already known of the medal and engraved a copy of it in 1725, shortly after Hertford joined the Metallographia Britannica project’s committee for the study of English coinage (Alexander 2008, 308). As the minutes and the label on the print both attest, the medal depicted here on Plate 1.20 belonged to Samuel Mead (1670-1734), the brother of Dr. Richard Mead (1673-1754), at the time of its exhibition and engraving; Samuel died several years after the medal was engraved, and the medal then passed from Samuel to his brother, as confirmed by the entry for “a large Medal of Gold of King Edward VI. with his Titles in Hebrew and Greek on the Reverse, engraved by the Society of Antiquaries” in the catalogue for the sale of Richard’s collections following his death in 1754 (Museum Meadianum 1755, 194).
However, a marginal note in the Society’s minutes, likely in Richard Gough’s (1735-1809) hand, suggests that “the engraving was made from” a medal in Thomas Hollis’s (1720-1774) collection (SAL Minutes I.206). Francis Perry engraved Hollis’s example of Edward VI’s coronation medal in 1761, provided its weight, and designated it as “after an original in silver” (RCIN 600976; Nichols 1857, 1.ccclx). Given that Hollis’s medal weighed significantly less than Mead’s medal, as documented by Perry—and that the Society’s minutes as well as the label on Plate 1.20 designate the medal here depicted as a “gold” specimen, Hollis’s silver medal cannot have been the same as the one here documented. There appears to be no record of the provenance or fate of Mead’s medal in particular, but a gold example of Edward VI’s coronation medal from the collection of George III is now in the British Museum.
The medal was struck in 1547 to commemorate the accession of Edward VI to the throne at the age of 10 (Till 1838, 2). Gough’s marginal note in the minutes accords with later sources in designating it as “ye first English Coronatn Medal” to be produced in England (see also Pinkerton 1790, 11 and Hawkins 1885, 1:54)—no doubt, the primary reason for its engraving here on Plate 1.20. Additionally, however, the medal’s inscription can be linked to that appearing on the gold medal of Henry VIII (1545) that Vertue engraved in 1740 for Plate 1.62.
Hollis, in a 1768 letter sent to the London Chronicle, makes the connection between Edward VI’s coronation medal and the medal on Plate 1.62 explicit. Having recently observed a cannon forged for Elizabeth I in 1588 at Woolwich, Hollis noted that an inscription on the weapon “alludes manifestly to a very valuable scarce medal, of Henry VIII. and to the as valuable, scarce coronation medal, the first and noblest of English coronation medals of Edward VI”—both “engraven [sic] among the plates published by the laudable Society of Antiquaries of London”; Hollis designates both medals as historically significant for having been “stricken on the dawn and progress of the Reformation” (Blackburne 1780, 2.673). Hollis’s note conveys a particular interest in the history of the inscribed phrases “supremum caput” (or “caput supremum”) and “fidei defensor,” all denoting the monarch as possessing supreme power, including over the church—and his brief note for the London Chronicle turns to Edward VI’s and Henry VIII’s medals to establish the history of such phrasing as having remained in use since the reign of Henry VIII, through that of Edward VI, and into the early years of Elizabeth I’s reign.
Notably, the silver crown of Henry VIII also depicted here on Plate 1.20, and minted in the same year as the medal appearing on Plate 1.62, contains the phrase “SVPREMVM CAPVT”—but only in Latin, on its reverse; both Edward VI’s medal and Henry VIII’s medal on Plate 1.62 include such phrasing on their obverses with translations of the same in Greek and Hebrew on their reverses. The medals from the reign of Elizabeth I that appear below on Plate 1.20, however, notably exclude such language from their inscriptions.
Armada Medal of Elizabeth I (c. 1588):
The SAL minutes record that on 24 February 1725, Thomas Serjeant brought in for examination “a medallion of gold of Q. Elizabeth of an extraordinary high relievo” and “enamel’d like flesh” from the collection of “Henry Hoar” (SAL Minutes I.144). The medal was likely procured by Henry Hoare (1677-1725) rather than his son, also named Henry Hoare (1705-1785); as Jervis and Dodd note, the younger Henry Hoare was nineteen when his father died, soon after the medal was exhibited to the SAL, and was “at that age more interested in hunting than the arts” (2015, 217). Henry Hoare II would go on, however, to display the medal prominently at Stourhead. Simon Swynfen Jervis and Dudley Dodd describe the medal as an “Armada Medal”: a commemorative token of Elizabeth’s victory over the Spanish Armada minted c. 1588. In his Medallic Illustrations of the History of Great Britain, Edward Hawkins identifies numerous medals struck in honor of the defeat of the Spanish Armada (1885, 1.144-49; 1.153-56); this one in particular is described as the “Dangers Averted” medal (1.153-56). Hawkins further identifies five variations of the “Dangers Averted” medal. The medal depicted on Plate 1.20 is unique among the five variations for being the only one featuring Elizabeth I on the obverse in partial profile rather than full-faced.
How Hoare, the famed banker and owner of Stourhead, acquired the medal is unknown, as is whether or not the medal was originally kept at Stourhead or at Fleet Street, where the Hoare family conducted its business (Jervis and Dodd 2015, 217). As Jervis and Dodd note, early descriptions from Stourhead’s visitors, including by Horace Walpole (1717-1797), never mention the medal. The medal makes its first conspicuous appearance in the 1784 Catalogue of Stourhead, a document prepared by Hoare’s son for his heir. There, it is described as being attached to Stourhead's famous Sixtus Cabinet, the “principal ornament” of Stourhead: a cabinet designed for Pope Sixtus V, and purchased by Hoare’s son on his grand tour in 1740. The cabinet is a lavish miniature model of a sixteenth-century church, featuring three tiers, wax models, paste jewels, enameling, and numerous secret drawers. In 1787 Count Carlo Gastone della Torre de Rezzonico (1742-1796) described the medal as affixed to the bottom of the third story of the cabinet and encased in a special frame (Jervis and Dodd 2015, 216). In both the 1784 Catalogue and a report from 1800, an enameled ornament depicting Saint George and the Dragon is recorded alongside the medal, suggesting it may have been attached to one of that other medal’s three bottom loops.
The Society’s engraving appears to be the first engraving to be made of the medal; the medal was re-engraved for Francis Perry’s A Series of English Medals (1762, Plate V). Again, however, Vertue’s personal records indicate that he engraved “medals Qu. Elisabeth [sic]” in 1723, and Alexander has linked this entry in Vertue’s records to a print featuring only this item from Plate 1.20 in the four volumes of prints that Vertue prepared in 1740 for Lord Oxford, whose numismatic collections the SAL had identified as significant for its Metallographia Britannica project in 1721/2 (see above; Alexander 2008, 298; Collection 1740, 2:123).
The British Museum declares that the “attribution of the medal” to Nicholas Hilliard “cannot be doubted.” Other sources are less certain; Elizabeth Goldring recognizes that Elizabeth was Hilliard’s “chief patron” at the time of the medal’s production and writes that he “may” have “designed (and perhaps helped to cast) celebratory Armada medals” (2019, 204). Goldring also acknowledges that Hilliard began his career as an apprentice to the goldsmith Robert Brandon, and that starting in the “early 1570s,” Hilliard—who remains primarily known as a portraitist—was “making a name for himself” as “a deviser of metalwork design” and “perhaps, also as a maker of jewelry” (114). Elizabeth commissioned Hilliard in 1584 “to collaborate with his fellow goldsmith Derek Anthony, Chief Graver at the Mint, on the Second Great Seal of the Realm,” which was completed in 1586 (189).
Vertue’s notebooks demonstrate a consistent interest in Hilliard’s work (“Vertue’s Note Book” 1931-32, 7-10). Walpole shared Vertue’s interest in Hilliard and notes that Hilliard was celebrated even in his own lifetime by quoting lines 3-5 from John Donne’s “The Storm” (1597): “a hand or eye / By Hilliard drawne, is worth an history, / By a worse painter made” (1762, 1.149). Drawing on Vertue's notebooks for his Anecdotes of Painting, which Walpole acquired in 1758, Walpole described Hilliard as a “limner, jeweler and goldsmith to Queen Elizabeth and afterwards to James,” and he credited Hilliard with designing a medal depicting a “view of the Spanish Armada” in the collection of Charles I (1762, 1.148-50). In addition to collecting Hilliard miniatures, Walpole acquired the only known copy of Hilliard’s important Arte of Limning (c. 1600), an early treatise celebrating the virtues of water-based over oil painting—in which Hilliard declared himself to be the “self-taught heir to both Holbein and Dürer” (Goldring 2019, 63). Walpole acquired this manuscript when he purchased Vertue’s papers in 1758, and the copy of Hilliard’s Arte of Limning was in Vertue’s hand. The gold medallion represented here in Vetusta Monumenta is cast and chased, illustrative of an aptitude for design, engraving, and finishing commonly associated with Hilliard.
Jervis and Dodd speculate that the medal engraved on Plate 1.20 is, in fact, a unique specimen of the three-quarter Armada Medal—notable for featuring an enamel coat of coloring on top of the gold, like the St. George and the Dragon ornament that was also attached to the Sixtus Cabinet. They argue that the prominence of place the Armada medal enjoyed on the cabinet illustrated the renewed timeliness of the history invoked by Elizabeth’s defeat of the Spanish Armada in the wake of sightings of French and Spanish fleets off the coast of Plymouth in 1779 and the publication of an anonymous poem, The Spanish Invasion (1780). The medal paired with George and the Dragon, and then attached to the cabinet, exemplified not only a confluence of brightly-colored, contemporaneous objects produced in the last decades of the sixteenth century but also a timely expression of eighteenth-century English patriotism.
Here on Plate 1.20, however, the medal appears to be included among the other objects primarily because of its rarity and its exquisite craftsmanship, which includes its design and execution as well as the “encaustic” work that the label on the print singles out as “transcend[ing] the medium.” Perhaps, Vertue suspected it was an example of Hilliard’s work. Additionally, its inscription may have been of interest to members of the SAL because it omits the “supremum caput” and “caput supremum” language on the objects above and predating it, while its significance relative to England’s relationship to Spain connects it to the medal of James I appearing at the bottom of Plate 1.20. The last known mention of Hoare’s Armada medal occurs in 1884 when Augusta, Lady Hoare noted in her diary that “Mr. Benjamin came to take away...the Spanish Armada Medal;” its current location is unknown (Jervis and Dodd 2015, 218n31).
The Phoenix Jewel (c. 1574) and the Phoenix Badge (c. 1574):
Under Henry Hoare’s Armada medal, two objects occupy a central position in the bottom half of the print, although their visual presentation makes it seem as if they might be representations of the same object. Highly-detailed renderings of the obverse and reverse of a cut-out medal depicting Elizabeth I and a phoenix rising from the flames, both surrounded by ornamental roses, appear on the far left- and right-hand sides of Plate 1.20; in between, two circular inscriptions surround faintly-traced outlines that evoke the portrait of Elizabeth I appearing on the cut-out medal to the left and the figure of the phoenix to the right.
The outer images on this portion of Plate 1.20 depict the obverse and the reverse of what is now known as “the Phoenix Jewel.” Goldring describes it as “a gold medallion of about 1574 which features the queen’s bust in profile and (on the reverse) a phoenix rising from the flames”; the object is likewise “[e]namelled with a wreath of green leaves and white and red Tudor roses” (2019, 114). As Goldring also confirms, the jewel “long has been tentatively linked to Hilliard on stylistic grounds” (114). As the label on Plate 1.20 indicates, the jewel was in Sloane’s collection at the time of its engraving, and Sloane’s manuscript catalogue included it under the category of “Miscellanies” (Paul 2012, 51). The minutes for the SAL report that on 27 April 1726, the Swiss physician Johann Jakob Scheuchzer brought the jewel, described as a “very fine profile of Q. Eliz: in gold adorn’d with enamell’d work curiously done,” to the Society’s meeting, and Stukeley “proposed it might be engraved on our plate of Q. Eliz: which was agreed to” (SAL Minutes I.190). As is the case with other items engraved on Plate 1.20, Alexander’s catalogue of Vertue’s work suggests that Vertue may have already drawn or engraved a version of the Phoenix Jewel in 1723 or 1725, following the examination of Sloane’s cabinet undertaken in the course of the Metallographia Britannica project under Stukeley’s direction (Alexander 2008, 298). After Sloane’s death in 1753, the jewel became a part of the original collection that formed the British Museum; it is still in the Museum’s collection today (SLMisc.1778). The item is a singular specimen and a notable example of craftsmanship; its colorful enameling likewise connects it to Hoare’s Armada medal, which appears above it.
As depicted on Plate 1.20, the jewel frames a circular inscription and faint tracings taken from another item now known as “the Phoenix Badge” or “the Phoenix Medal” (Goldring 2019, 113-14). According to the Society’s minutes, the badge was formally exhibited to the Society one year before the jewel—on 19 May 1725, when Hertford brought in a “fine high raisd q. Eliz: hoi mihi qd tantu virtus perfuse decore. Non habet eternos inviolate dies”; like the jewel, the badge was from Sloane’s collection, as noted on the print (SAL Minutes I.161).2 A marginal note added later, likely by Gough, confirms that the object displayed by Hertford was “engraved by the Society” (SAL Minutes I.161). The badge may have been known to Vertue in either 1723 or 1725, when he records engraving medals of Queen Elizabeth, including the Armada medal appearing just above the badge and jewel (Alexander 2008, 298, 308). The badge had been previously described by Evelyn in his Numismata (1697, 93) and was later engraved by both Perry (1762, Plate V) and Pinkerton (1790, Plate VII). Whether or not the specific example of the badge here depicted on Plate 1.20 from Sloane’s collection became part of the British Museum’s core collection following Sloane’s death isn’t clear; the Phoenix Badge currently in the museum—“rarer than generally supposed”—was donated by Dr. Laurie A. Lawrence in 1927 (1927,0404.3).
As Evelyn’s dating of the badge to 1574 suggests, it has long been thought to have been produced around the same time as the Phoenix Jewel—and, like the jewel, the badge has been attributed to Hilliard (Goldring 2019, 113-14). Both the badge and the jewel illustrate Elizabeth I’s affinity for the emblem of the phoenix (Strong 1987, 82-83) and connect the objects to two portraits attributed to Hilliard with near certainty: a miniature from 1572 and a portrait of Elizabeth known as “the Phoenix Portrait” (c.1573-1576), the latter because it prominently features a jeweled phoenix hanging from the Queen’s neck (see “The Phoenix and the Pelican: Two Portraits of Elizabeth I, c. 1575”). In 2017, Dora Thornton, Curator of Renaissance Collections for the British Museum, connected the Phoenix Jewel to the Armada medal appearing above it here on Plate 1.20, suggesting that the emblem of the phoenix extended the Armada medal’s message “promot[ing] Elizabeth as a political survivor; one who has lived through Catholic conspiracy at home and foreign invasion”; the presence of loops on both objects indicate they were “designed to be worn as a token of loyalty and allegiance” (Thornton 2017).
During Elizabeth’s reign, the image of the phoenix, Thornton explains, was associated with not only the legendary bird’s immortality but also “chastity”; understood as a distinctly feminine entity, the phoenix was used by Elizabeth I to represent her resilience as well as her “rarity, beauty and distinction. There can only be one Queen of England—there can only be one phoenix” (Thornton 2017). Notably, however, the inscription on the badge here engraved for Plate 1.20 laments Elizabeth’s status as a chaste, unmarried sovereign. Penned by the civil lawyer Walter Haddon (1514/15-1571), the Latin verse on the obverse translates as, “Alas! that virtue endued with so much beauty, should not uninjured enjoy perpetual life,” and on the reverse: “Happy Arabs whose only Phœnix reproduces by its death a new Phœnix / Wretched English whose only Phœnix becomes, unhappy fate, the last in our country,” according to the entry for the Phoenix Badge in the British Museum’s catalog (Goldring 2019, 114).
Why Vertue, whose aptitude for producing highly-detailed engravings is evident on every other print he produced for Vetusta Monumenta, engraved only the motto and faint tracings from the Phoenix Badge, is ultimately unclear. Viewers can infer, however, that members of the SAL may have supposed that the Phoenix Jewel was related to, and perhaps even cut from, a copy of the badge—and they may have imagined that the motto on the Phoenix badge was underneath the floral ornamentation that surrounds it. In her History of Jewelry, 1100-1870, Joan Evans suggests something similar: that the jewel was cut from a copy of the Phoenix badge (1970, 120). However, a careful study of both objects (compare, for example, the differences between the phoenix’s head feather on the jewel and the badge) shows discrepancies indicating the jewel was either cut from a different iteration of the badge or a distinct medal bearing a similar design.
Given both Johnson’s emphasis in 1724 on recovering the “legends” of coins for the Metallographia Britannica project and the connections Hollis found between the Coronation Medal of Edward VI (above on Plate 1.20) and the Fidei Defensor medal (Plate 1.62), and which may have impacted the choice to engrave the silver crown of Henry VIII (here also on Plate 1.20 and discussed above), perhaps the legend on the Phoenix Badge was itself sufficiently worth recording in its own right. Likewise, whereas the enameling connects the Phoenix Jewel to Hoare’s unique Armada medal, the faint outlines in Vertue’s rendering of the Phoenix Badge suggest an interest in the overall design of both the jewel and the badge, especially regarding their style of portraiture, indicating that Vertue, at least, may have suspected all three objects were the work of Hilliard.
Medal of James I, Commemorating the Peace with Spain (1604):
The bottom object on Plate 1.20, like those immediately above it, was in Sloane’s collection at the time of its engraving. The SAL formally balloted on 12 April 1727 that “the Medal struck upon the Conclusion of the Peace Between the Crowns of England & Spain, Anno 1604, and in the Custody of Sr Hans Sloan [sic], be Engraved,” just two weeks after making their formal decision to have the Coronation Medal of Edward VI, also on Plate 1.20, engraved (SAL Minutes I.207). As is the case with other items on this print, however, Vertue’s records indicate he knew of this medal in 1723, when he lists “one” medal of James I alongside his entry for engraving the medals of Elizabeth “from the collections of Henry Hoare and Hans Sloane” (Alexander 2008, 298). In 1725, he repeats a similar entry documenting his engraving of a “silver” medal of James I alongside Edward VI’s Coronation Medal and “Medals of Qu Elisabeth. in gold” (308).
The medal of James I here depicted here appears to have been exhibited at a meeting of the SAL two years before members balloted to have it engraved (and two years after Vertue’s records suggested he had already engraved it). The minutes record that on 17 November 1725, Scheuchzer “brought a silver coyn of Ja. I. very bold,” dated 1604, and bearing the inscription, “huic pax copia claraq religio”—just about five months before Scheuchzer showed the Phoenix Jewel, above, at a meeting of the Society (SAL Minutes I.174).3 Members of the SAL seem to have refined their understanding of the object by the time they balloted to have it officially engraved in 1727; no longer designated as a “coyne,” the item is instead recognized as a medal commemorating the Peace with Spain that James I achieved by signing the Treaty of London in 1604 after nineteen years of war between the two nations (SAL Minutes I.207). In this regard, the medal of James I on Plate 1.20 relates to Henry Hoare’s Armada medal.
Hawkins claims that the medal commemorating the Peace with Spain is primarily notable, however, as the “only medal on which James is styled King of England and Scotland” (Hawkins 1885, 1.193). James ascended the Scottish throne as James VI in 1567—and following the death of Elizabeth in 1603, the English throne as James I. Hawkins identifies a very similar medal to the one here depicted, also minted in 1604 to commemorate the Peace with Spain, with the following inscription on its reverse: “IACOBVS . D’ . G’ . MAG’ . BRIT’ , FRAN . ET . HIB’ . R.” Whereas the legend on the medal Vertue engraved designates James I as the king of Scotland and England, separately (“SCO” and “ANG” on the inscription), the medal later identified by Hawkins collapses both under the label “MAG,” denoting Great Britain. Such a detail may explain why the SAL decided to engrave this particular numismatic object from the reign of James I, especially given that they had examined a Scottish coin issued by James and dated 1602 just six weeks prior to Scheuchzer’s presentation of the medal commemorating the Peace with Spain (SAL Minutes I.172).
It’s possible, however, that the Society was more interested in the inscription on the medal’s reverse, recorded by Stukeley in the minutes: “H[I]NC PAX COPIA CLARAQ RELIGIO” (Hence peace, plenty, and plain religion) (SAL Minutes I.174). If the SAL understood Henry VIII’s styling on his coins and medals to announce the “dawn” of the Reformation, as Hollis put it in his 1768 letter linking Edward VI’s Coronation Medal to the Fidei Defensor medal on Plate 1.62, then perhaps they understood James I’s inscription, here appearing at the beginning of his reign, to herald its sunset; James I, of course, had been baptized as a Catholic, and his reign would presage the political and religious conflicts that culminated in the English Civil War.
At the same time, James I’s medal commemorating the Peace with Spain has been attributed to Hilliard (Barclay and Syson 1993), linking it to the Armada Medal, Phoenix Jewel, and Phoenix Badge also on the print. Based on his study of Vertue’s notebooks, however, Walpole reports that Vertue attributed the medal not to Hilliard but to the Chief Graver of the Mint and Seals, Charles Anthony, with whom Hilliard collaborated on a number of projects (Goldring 2019, 192-93) but about whom—Walpole laments—he can find no information (1762, 2.131). Although another medal attributed to Anthony appears on Plate 1.55, it may be that Vertue suspected that the medal commemorating the Peace with Spain here on Plate 1.20 was the work of Hilliard, and not Anthony, after all. As Goldring explains, Hilliard continued to do work for the royal mint under the rule of James I while also continuing to serve as a royal limner; “Hilliard’s involvement in the design of James’s Great Seal” in 1603, for example, has long been asserted based on “stylistic evidence” (2019, 251). Notably, Pinkerton reported that the medal was “supposed to be done by Hillyard [sic]” in 1790 (33). Whether or not Vertue suspected Hilliard had a hand in the medal commemorating the Peace with Spain, the description of the object as “very bold” in the minutes may be taken, perhaps, as a judgment of the tone of its inscription or its overall aesthetic style—rather than its crispness as a specimen, which the minutes usually denote by describing the object as of “high relievo,” as is the case with the entry for the Armada medal—and thereby indicative of its appeal to Vertue as another fine example of numismatic design and historical portraiture.
The British Museum currently has three versions of this medal, one each in bronze, silver, and gold—of which the gold is the most rare (1844,0425.24). The fate of Sloane’s silver medal engraved here on Plate 1.20, however, is unknown; the British Museum locates the provenance of their silver example to the collections of George III and George IV (G3,E.M.200).
Conclusion:
Plate 1.20 seems to gather together especially rare numismatic specimens from the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries that members of the SAL uncovered in the course of their research—items notable as the first or the most singular of their kind—and, with the exception of the crown of Henry VIII, arguably ill-suited for a history of coinage, strictly defined, because of their status as medals rather than currency. All the same, the initial impetus behind this engraving seems likely to have come from their Metallographia Britannica project. Seventeenth-century numismatists like Evelyn understood coins and medals alike to be “vocal,” capable of conveying a wide range of reliable information about the past. Many of the objects on the print inevitably speak to the conflicts of the seventeenth century that had made antiquarian study of coins and medals, seem so urgent in the first place. Finally, the uniqueness of the items enhances their status as works of historical art. By featuring both unique objects and comparatively few in total, Plate 1.20 underscores the high quality of the portraiture and of the overall design of each item. Vertue’s engraving seems especially remarkable on Plate 1.20, exhibiting not only the exquisite precision for which he was rightly celebrated by his fellow antiquaries in the SAL but also an interest in the historical shape of numismatic design and portraiture, as suggested by the tracings used to represent the Phoenix Badge. Vertue’s own artistic engagement with history in his role as the Society’s official engraver seems to dovetail in this print with his study of art history, particularly the craft of executing designs on metal, as practiced by the early modern makers with whom he enters into community in this record of their achievements.
Notes:
[1]: Nichols mistakenly identifies these plates as Plate 1.40.
[2]: Stukeley, writing hastily, appears to have made errors in the Latin.
[3]: Stukeley again appears to have made a minor error in transcribing the Latin.
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