Plates 1.37-1.38: Tables of English Coins
Objects: Two tables arranged vertically in ascending chronological order based on English monarchs with horizontal categorizations denoting types of coins, also arranged in ascending order based on value. The tables record which coins were produced in England during which monarchs’ reigns. Plate 1.37 represents the silver coins that were struck during each reign, including: pennies, half pennies, farthings, groats, half groats, threepence, shillings, sixpence, crowns, and half crowns. Plate 1.38 represents the gold coins that were struck during each reign, including: rose-nobles, half rose-nobles, quarter rose-nobles, double rose-nobles, angels, half angels, quarter angels, crowns, half crowns, sovereigns, half sovereigns, quarter sovereigns, guineas, half guineas, double guineas, five-pound pieces, and quarter guineas. The minutes confirm that Sharp designed the tables, but the tables as presented in Vetusta Monumenta are emended to reflect coinage minted after Sharp’s death and the numismatic research undertaken by the Society’s fellows between 1720-1731 (SAL Minutes I.252). Additionally, Plates 1.37 and 1.38 relegate coinage minted during the Commonwealth to a textual note.
Transcription:
Plate 1.37, Top: A Table of ENGLISH SILVER COINS. / N:o I.
Plate 1.37, Table Rows:
Began in Reign. / Succession of Kings from the Conquest.
1066 William I. Duke of Normandy.
1087 William II. his second Son.
1100 Henry I. the Youngest Son to William I.
1135 Stephen. Grandson to William I. by a Daughter.
1155 Henry II. Grandson to Hen; I. by Maud ye Empress.
1189 Richard I. his eldest Son.
1199 John. Richard’s Brother.
1216 Henry III. Son of John.
1272 Edward I. Son of Henry III.
1307 Edward II. Son of the First.
1327 Edward III. Son of the Second.
1377 Richard the IId. Son of the black Prince.
1399 Henry IV. of the House of Lancaster.
1412 Henry V. Son of Henry the Fourth.
1422 Henry VI. Son of Henry the Fifth.
1460 Edward IV. of the House of York.
1483 Edward V. Son of Edward Fourth, never croun’d.
1483 Richard III. Brother of Edward the Fourth.
1485 Henry VII. Union of the Roses.
1509 Henry VIII. Son of Henry the Seventh.
1547 Edward VI. Son of Henry the Eight.
1553 Mary Sister to Edward the Sixth.
1558 Elizabeth Daughter to Hen: 8 by A Bullen.
1602 James I. Union of the Kingdoms.
1625 Charles I. Son of James the First.
1648 Charles II. Son of Charles the First.
1684 James II. Brother of Charles ye Second.
1688 William III. & Mary II. the Revolution.
1694 William, alone.
1701 Anne. Daughter of James II.
1714 George I. Elector of Hannover.
1727 George II. Son of George the First.
Plate 1.37, Table Columns:
Pennys.
Half-Pennys.
Farthings.
Groats.
Half Groats.
Three Pence.
Shillings.
Six Pence.
Crowns.
Half Crowns.
Plate 1.37, Bottom: N.B. Eustace Son of Stephen coined pennys.__ Henry Son of Henry 2d coined Pennys. King John coin’d peñy, half peñy & farthings in Ireland.__the following Kings coin’d money there. (till K. Charles, 1st_) the Black Prince Son of Edw,d III. coin’d Peñys.__ Henry 6 coin’d silver pieces of money at Paris.__ Henry 8 coin’d money at Tournay.__ Q. Eliz. coin’d 3 half peñy & 3 farthing peices.__King Cha. 1.st coin’d 20.s. & 10.s. peices.__CommonWealth coin’d ½ penny, peñy, 2 peñy, 3 peny, Groats, 6 penys shillings ½ Crown & Crowns.__ Oliver Cromwel 6 peñys shillings, 1 Crowns, & Crown peices. / Sumptibus Societatis Antiquariӕ Lond.
Plate 1.38, Top: A Table of ENGLISH GOLD COINS. / N.o II.
Plate 1.38, Table, Top Left: OF SAXON GOLD COINS. / One or two pieces have been discover’d (only) therefore it’s concluded there has been little or no Gold Coin’d from the Romans leaving this Island A.D. 446 to the 18 of King Edw.d 3.d
Plate 1.38, Table Rows:
First GOLD Coines.
XVIII Edward III. / A.D. MCCCXLIV.
Richard II.
Henry IV.
Henry V.
Henry VI.
Edward IV.
Edward V.
Richard III.
Henry VII.
Henry VIII.
Edward VI.
Mary.
Elizabeth.
James I.
Charles I.
Charles II.
James II.
W. m & Mary.
William, alone
Anne.
George I.
George II.
Plate 1.38, Table Columns:
Rose-nobles, or Rials
Half Rose-nobles, or half Rials
Quarter Rose-nobles, or Quarter Rials
Double Rials
Angels
Angelets, or half Angels
Quarter Angels
Crowns of Gold
Half Crowns of Gold
Sovereigns call’d Broad-Peices
Half Sovereigns
Quarter Sovereigns
Guineas
Half Guineas
Double Guineas
Five Pound Peices
Quarter Guineas.
Plate 1.38, Bottom: N.B. The Black Prince coin’d Gold in Aquitain.__ Henry 6. coin’d half & whole Salutes at Paris.__ Charles 1;st coin’d 3 pounds or three broad peices at Oxford.__ Com̃on-Wealth coin’d, 5.s. 10.s. & 20 Shilling peices. O. Cromwell coin’d twenty Shillings milled pieces._K. William coin’d Pistoles & half Pistoles, call’d Darien money. / Sumptibus Societatis Antiquariӕ Lond.
Commentary by Crystal B. Lake and David Shields:
Prelude: Metallographia Britannica and Other Numismatic Efforts in the 1720s
“Antient coins” appeared first on the list of items singled out for study by Humfrey Wanley (1672-1726) when the antiquaries revived their meetings in 1707, and Plates 1.37 and 1.38—along with their numbered companions,Plates 1.43 and 1.56—are the product of this longstanding numismatic interest (Evans 1956, 36). For members of the revived Society of Antiquaries of London (SAL) who trekked to the Mitre tavern for their weekly meetings in the early 1720s, coins and medals must have been especially convenient to study because of their portability—but antiquaries had placed a high premium on the importance of numismatic research since the Renaissance (Haskell 1993, 13-25). Coins’ and medals’ metallic durability, along with their longstanding historical function in mortuary rituals, meant that substantial quantities of numismatic artifacts had been discovered and made widely available as collectible items by the start of the eighteenth century. As Rosemary Sweet explains, coins were not only the “commonest relics of antiquity” but also valued as artifacts that “had stronger claims to authenticity than written texts, which were more easily forged, and generated in partisan circumstances” (2004, 13-14).
As the commentary for Plate 1.20 also documents, antiquaries’ numismatic interests led members of the SAL to plan to prepare a comprehensive history of English coins, termed Metallographia Britannica. The Society officially launched the Metallographia Britannica project in January 1721/2 when “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.53). To that end, members of the SAL apportioned the work that needed to be done amongst their fledgling membership. The Society tasked William Stukeley (1687-1765) with researching the history of British coins issued before the Norman Conquest and Peter Le Neve (1661-1729) with studying the English coins minted after; George Holmes (1662-1749) and James Hill (1697-1727) were to investigate Saxon coins; Roger Gale (1672-1744) was to gather information about Roman coins—and his brother, Samuel Gale (1682-1754), to do the same for the Danish (Evans 1956, 72). Although members of the SAL regularly brought coins, medals, and documents related to numismatic studies to meetings in the ensuing weeks, months, and years, work on the Metallographia Britannica stalled; in 1724 and in his capacity as the Society’s newly-elected president, Algernon Seymour, Lord Hertford (1684-1750), suggested that the project of “collecting all the legends and accounts of Coyns [sic] that relate to Britain” be “resum’d” (SAL Minutes I.112).
In 1726, Stephen Martin Leake (1702-1777) published his Nummi Britannici Historia, which Anna Marie Roos describes as the “first” book focused exclusively on the history of “English coinage” (2021, 187). Leake was elected to the SAL in the same year that he published his treatise. Rogers Ruding maintained that Leake’s study was derived mostly and lamentably from published sources rather than from the study of relevant manuscripts and coin cabinets ([1817] 1840, 1.ix). In his preface, Leake stated that he had developed his history of British coinage largely on his own, but he praised the SAL’s nascent Metallographia Britannica project and commended the “Society of British Antiquarians” for “unit[ing] themselves to search out, and preserve from Oblivion” England’s coins, the “venerable Remains of their Native Country” (1726, ix).
As Leake’s preface also indicates, the task of preparing a comprehensive history of British coinage was daunting. “[N]o single Person,” Leake admitted, could ever hope to examine “all the Cabinets of the Curious” (1726, iv). Yet despite the quantity of old coins that had been found throughout Britain, Leake insisted that British coins had been “much neglected” because numismatic collectors prioritized adding “foreign” coins to their cabinets, especially those originating in ancient Greece and Rome (1726, viii). Additionally, Leake observed that the “pernicious Custom of clipping and melting down” coins in Britain had made its “old Money” a “Scarcity”; “hammered” gold and silver examples from reigns predating Charles II and Elizabeth I, respectively, were “quite vanished” by the early 1700s, according to Leake. “[T]he World,” he concluded, could therefore never “expect to receive perfect from a single Hand” a “complete History of English Coins”—and he looked forward to the SAL’s completion of their planned project to “preserve intire [sic]” a “complete History of English Coins” and hoped they would “proceed in so laudable an Undertaking with Zeal and Harmony” (ix).
Despite the hopes Leake placed in the Society’s plans for a collaboratively-produced Metallographia Britannica, the Society abandoned the project as it was originally conceived—that is, as a “complete description and history” of British coinage—in 1732, shortly after the publication of Plates 1.37 and 1.38. In place of the Metallographia Britannica, the SAL pursued completing and publishing its numismatic research under the leadership of Martin Folkes (1690-1754), inspired in part by his specific interests in metrology (see Plate 1.69). The fits and starts of the Society’s progress on a Metallographia Britannica illustrate how numismatic studies could entail problems of both abundance and scarcity simultaneously, and Plates 1.37 and 1.38 arguably reflect as well as respond to those problems. On the one hand, the difficulty of identifying, comparing, and classifying so many small and varied objects should not be underestimated. On the other hand, breaks in the chronological sequences of numismatic cabinets became especially difficult problems to solve when previously unknown coins, as well as counterfeits, were discovered. Plates 1.37 and 1.38, therefore, appear to indicate the antiquaries’ attempts to impose order on what constantly threatened to become an unruly field of historical inquiry, while the other two plates in the series—Plate 1.43 and Plate 1.56—seem to give freer rein to the digressive facets of the Society’s numismatic research.
Not only did coins present logistical challenges to antiquaries’ attempts to arrange them into some kind of order, members of the SAL also had other areas of interest they were keen to pursue in the 1720s. For example, Plates 1.6 and 1.7 (which depict the ruins of Walsingham Abbey and Waltham Cross, respectively) along with Plate 1.8 (a map of the Roman town of Verulamium in Hertfordshire) exemplify the antiquaries’ ongoing interests in architectural ruins, historical monuments, and sites of excavation. Thomas Hearne (1678-1735) famously carped about the piecemeal research the Society’s prints appeared to belie in the 1720s (Evans 1956, 70). As Sweet’s discussion of coins suggests, however, numismatic studies complemented antiquaries’ eclecticism. In his famous treatise first published in 1697, Numismata, John Evelyn (1620-1706) described coins as the most “vocal” of antiquities (1). By this, Evelyn meant several things. Firstly, coins were thought to be the most reliable antiquities because of their metallic durability, which allowed them to outlast and supplant other documentary evidence. Secondly, coins’ dates and inscriptions allowed them to be plotted in historical sequences and were used to establish chronological orders. Thirdly, numismatists like Evelyn appreciated coins as pictorial snapshots from the past. Coins were useful for illustrating ancient texts while their depictions of monuments, historical dress, and symbolical objects as well as their inscriptions also meant they could be consulted in the service of a variety of historical inquiries on which written sources were “largely silent” (Sweet 2004, 14).
Plate 1.8 implicitly acknowledges the importance of coins for antiquarian research writ large by marking several sites in Verulamium where urns of coins had been discovered. At the same time, however, plates like Plate 1.7 and Plate 1.8 not only reflect Stukeley’s interests in different kinds of antiquities but also suggest, perhaps, that his enthusiasm for identifying the qualities that British antiquities shared with Greco-Roman antiquities introduced another snag into the Metallographia Britannica project. When Stukeley presented his findings regarding British coins in May 1722, he notably delivered to the SAL drawings of a “great number of British Coyns drawn out in some Order” and “propose[d] to demonstrate” that those drawings illustrated their “great Conformity with the old Greek and Punic” (SAL Minutes I.62-63). Although many antiquaries were eager to trace affinities between British and classical antiquities, many also recognized that “framing” their objects of study to a prebaked neoclassical “hypothesis” could compromise the scientific accuracy of their historical research, as John Aubrey (1626-1697) put it in the seventeenth century when he censured Inigo Jones’s claims that Stonehenge was undoubtedly a Vitruvian specimen of Roman architecture ([1665-1693] 1981, 1.19-20). As Leake had also recognized in his complaint about collectors’ preference for “foreign” coins, neoclassical tastes risked sidelining investigations into early British coins, which even their most ardent collectors characterized as “barbarous” (Folkes 1736, 5).
Following Stukeley’s presentation to the SAL of his sketches aligning British coins with classical counterparts in 1722, nothing more was explicitly recorded about the Metallographia Britannica in the Society’s minute books for two years, although the minutes confirm that SAL members continued to examine coins. When the Metallographia Britannica project was revived in 1724, members of the SAL again assembled themselves into five committees focused on the same regions and eras, but now with usually more than one antiquary set at each committee’s helm; Heneage Finch, Earl of Winchilsea (1657-1726), joined Stukeley in the study of British coinage before the Conquest; Le Neve was joined by William Nicholas (c. 1668-1749) and one “Mr. Crayke” in the study of coinage minted after; Wanley, keeper of the Harleian Library, took over the study of Saxon coins; Roger Gale was now joined by the Latin lexicographer Robert Ainsworth (1660-1743) in the study of Roman coins related to Britain; only Samuel Gale continued in his original role as the sole lead investigator of Danish coins.
In 1724, the minutes also record a more specific plan of action for each committee than they had in 1721/2; the “first names” of each committee were to gather “all the information that can be had, the drawings & descriptions of all the coyne [sic] under [each] class” (SAL Minutes I.112). Meanwhile, the other members of the committees were “to communicate what comes in [their] way of any class” (I.112). Then, “from time to time,” the Society’s secretary was to collect reports on the committees’ numismatic discoveries, “together with what descriptions or historical matters appertain to them” (I.112). Finally, “when the work [was] judg’d complete,” the SAL would publish the Metallographia Britannica along with images of the coins “handsomely engraven by the best hands” (I.112).
Later that month, an unsigned letter was sent to the SAL arguing that the best method for developing a Metallographia Britannica would be one that started by cataloguing known numismatic collections in London and its vicinity—perhaps reminding the SAL of work that had already been undertaken for the project and indicating that numismatists were aware, and wary, that a comprehensive history of English coinage constituted a daunting project (Evans 1956, 72). It isn’t clear whether the letter-writer’s advice was heeded, but coins of all kinds continued to be presented at nearly every meeting the SAL held for the next several years, and George Vertue was always at the ready to engrave them. Maurice Johnson (1688-1755), founder of the Spalding Gentleman’s Society, attended a meeting of the SAL in June 1724 bearing “some Collections he has made towards our Metallographia Brittanica, for which he had the thanks of the Society, and was desired to continue them” (SAL Minutes I.124). Coins continued to be shown at meetings, and Vertue himself brought in an increasing number of examples, almost all of which were British or English. Following the decision to revive the Metallographia Britannica, Vertue brought in drawings of coins from the reigns of William and Mary and James II for members to examine (I.115). In April 1725, Vertue brought more than a dozen coins to one of the Society’s meetings (I.156). He brought in yet more coins in May and September, and again in January 1726 (I.159, I.172, I.181). Hugh Pagan has identified the year 1725 as “the peak year for numismatic exhibits” at meetings of the SAL; that year, “at least 150 coins and medals must have been passed round the table at the Mitre Tavern” (2015, 369).
The Society’s enthusiasm for numismatics, however, appeared to wane shortly thereafter, likely overshadowed by the controversy that erupted around Stukeley’s method of handling the minute books and stifled by the decision to hold their meetings in the somber rooms of Colonel Floyer in Gray’s Inn (Evans 1956, 76-82). Vertue, however, showed a few more coins and medals between 1725 and 1728 (SAL Minutes I.159. I.172, I.182, I.186, I.220), while Sir John Evelyn (1682-1763)—grandson of the famed author of Numismata (cited above)—began attending the Society’s meetings after his election in 1725; he exhibited a “very Large & Curious Collection of Gold Coins” in January 1727/8 (I.219), another especially “gd [sic] collection of ancient gold Coins of Engld France & Spain” in February (I.224), and a third “Collection of Gold Coins” in March (I.225).
No more mention was made, however, of the Metallographia Britannica; although hardly a meeting of the Society went by without a coin or medal to look at between 1721/2 (when the SAL began its Metallographia Britannica project in earnest) and 1731 (the year Plates 1.37 and 1.38 were commissioned), the numismatic objects displayed spanned such a wide range of periods, types, and geographical regions that they resisted consolidation into a coherent publication. Members brought Roman, Greek, Saxon, British, English, and Scottish coins as well as medals in for examination, and Stukeley picked up the hobbyhorse he would ride for decades—an obsession with the coins issued during the reign of the Roman Emperor Carausius (d. 293)—before he rode out of town, chagrined by the Society’s squabbling over the minute books (Piggott (1950) 1985, 139). The minutes that Stukeley kept up until then suggest, in other words, that the Society’s interest in numismatic specimens continued to broaden rather than narrow. Wanley’s 1707 directive for the SAL had declared that “by the subject of Antiquities and History of Great Britain, we understand only such things as shall precede the Raign [sic] of James the first King of England,” but by 1722, the SAL had begun to investigate more contemporary objects, including coins (quoted in Evans 1956, 36). Medals, too, were often considered at the Society’s meetings, and Neil Guthrie argues that they demonstrate the Society’s growing interests in “modern” numismatics; Plate 1.20 notably features a medal of James I, first exhibited at the SAL in 1725.
Lending further support to the claim that members of the SAL increasingly took more recent histories into consideration, Plates 1.37 and 1.38 extend Sharp’s documentation of England’s coinage into the then-present reign of George II. They also likely reflect a renewed surge in enthusiasm for attending meetings of the SAL that followed the Society’s return to the Mitre tavern in 1729. Johnson, who attended SAL meetings somewhat regularly in the early 1720s and helped to support and guide the original Metallographia Britannica project, was in abeyance after 1726—but he resumed exhibiting a range of numismatic objects at the Society’s meetings in 1729 (SAL Minutes I.244, I.249, I.256, and I. 274). Similarly, Browne Willis (best known for his studies related to medieval architecture) appears to have ceased attending meetings in 1723—but in 1730, he took a renewed interest in his personal numismatic collections and began regularly presenting his research and exhibiting items from his cabinet at the Mitre shortly thereafter (Milne 1937, 449; SAL Minutes I.262, I.264, I.265, I.269, I.276, I.278, I.288, I.290). Likewise, West had been elected to the SAL in 1726 following the reputation he had established as a collector, but he attended only a few meetings until 1730, when like Johnson and Willis, he began attending meetings regularly and almost always with coins or medals in hand (I.243, I.261, I.271, I.273, I.276, I.279, I.282, I.283, I.293).
Sharp’s Tables and the SAL
It was to the Mitre on 26 November 1730 that “Mr. West brought a Scheme made by Sharp Abp of York of the Gold & Silver Coins of England whereby at one View is seen What Coins were struck by Each Prince with Critical Notes Illustrating the History of the said Coins. which Mr. Roger Gale proposed might be engraven” (SAL Minutes I.252). The following July, “[i]t was by Ballot ordered that the Table of the Coins produced by Mr. West be engraven by Mr. Vertue” (I.273). Vertue presented proofs and was ordered to print 200 Copies of the tables more than a year later, on 27 February 1732—one week after Martin Folkes, who had been elected to the SAL in 1720 but never attended a meeting until that very month, “brought an account of the English Gold & Silver Coins examined by the Balance & compared with the Standard weight” (I.282-83).
John Sharp’s tables were not, in and of themselves, an especially remarkable discovery. Sharp was primarily known for the political tightropes he walked as a high-profile Anglican clergyman in the years preceding and following the Glorious Revolution; appointed as the Archbishop of York in 1691, Sharp became a close confidante of Queen Anne. As his son and biographer reported, however, the study of “[c]oins and medals” provided the “amusement and delight” of Sharp’s leisure hours, and in the course of his studies he amassed a cabinet of numismatic specimens that “was inferior to few in England, especially in regard of the Saxon and English coins” (Sharp 1825, 1.47; see also Manville 2009, 256). Additionally, Sharp’s son confirms that his father “wrote and left a large MS” relative to his numismatic studies, “in which some treatises respecting the English coins, and their proper marks of difference, have been thought, by good judges, very accurate and valuable” (1.47-48).
Sharp circulated his numismatic research in manuscript, and the various copies of his notes on English coinage show that he “revised” his findings as his studies progressed (Pagan 1987, 179n36). In 1697, the same year that Evelyn’s Numismata appeared, William Nicolson (1655-1727) was preparing the third volume of his Historical Library (1696-1699) and planned to “conclude it with a chapter on the English coinage” (Pagan 1987, 178). Nicolson appealed to his friend the antiquary Ralph Thoresby (1658-1725) for assistance; Thoresby, in turn, appealed to his friend Sharp. By the end of 1698, Nicolson had sent a draft of his writing on English coinage to Sharp for review. Sharp corrected Nicolson’s section on English gold coins but determined he would rather “kill two birds with one stone” and pay his “respects” to both men by sending Nicolson a copy, “with additions and improvements,” of all the “notes” he had made so far relative to English “silver coins”—and then Nicolson was to forward Sharp’s notes on to Thoresby (Hunter, 1.342-43). Writing to Thoresby shortly after having sent him Sharp’s notes, Nicolson declared that the archbishop’s writeup of his numismatic research “gave me that satisfaction which I thought was nowhere to be had” (1.347). Nicolson dedicated his Historical Library to Sharp and lavishly credited the archbishop for the numismatic expertise he had provided for its final chapter.
Sharp, meanwhile, would go on to will his collection of coins to Thoresby who inherited them upon Sharp’s death in 1714 (Till 2004)—and Richard Gough (1735-1809) would purchase the notes Sharp originally sent to Nicolson at the sale of Thoresby’s “museum” in 1764 and see them through to publication in 1785 (Nichols 1785, v). In between Gough’s purchase of Sharp’s notes in 1764 and their publication in 1785, John Ives published “Archbishop Sharp’s Remarks upon our Silver Coins” in his Select Papers Chiefly Relating to English Antiquities in 1773. Ives provides a note attesting that Sharp had sent a “transcript” of his remarks to Thoresby who, in turn, had given them to Peter Le Neve from whose collection Ives had purchased them following Le Neve’s death in 1729 (Ives 1773, 1; Nichols 1785, vi). Since Le Neve was the committee chair in the area of post-Conquest coinage for the Metallographia Britannica project, it seems likely that he consulted the transcript of Sharp’s notes that Thoresby sent him. Yet although Ives refers his readers to the Society’s minute books to confirm the transmission of Sharp’s notes via Thoresby to Le Neve, the minutes do not record any discussion of Sharp’s work or presentation of his manuscripts until West exhibited Sharp’s “scheme” in 1730.
Nonetheless, members of the SAL would likely have known about Sharp’s numismatic research thanks to Nicolson, Thoresby, and Le Neve before West’s presentation of Sharp’s “scheme”; it’s also possible that they had recently found a copy in the Harleian Library of the notes that Sharp sent to Robert Harley, the 1st Earl of Oxford (1661-1724) (see Harl. MS 4119). Vertue often worked for Edward Harley, the 2nd Earl (1689-1741), in the 1720s and 30s, and Sharp’s manuscript may already have been known to Wanley, the Harleys’ librarian until his death in 1726, or to West, who would notably go on to broker the sale of the Harleian manuscripts to the state in 1753 (see Plates 1.66-1.68; Harris 1989). Accordingly, Plates 1.37 and 1.38 may be seen in the context of the Society’s ongoing efforts (see also Plates 1.28-1.33, 1.45, 1.66-1.68, 2.3, and 2.28) to preserve a history of antiquarianism—in this case, Sharp’s numismatic researches.
These tables also promote what must surely have been the welcome simplicity of Sharp’s “scheme”: a basic visualization of which denominations of silver coins (Plate 1.37) and gold coins (Plate 1.38) were minted during the reigns of England’s monarchs, organized chronologically. At the same time, however, Plates 1.37 and 1.38 notably do much more than simply reproduce Sharp’s tables; they also attempt to correct, update, and even politically sanitize Sharp’s original versions.
Vertue’s Engraved Version of the Tables
West’s presentation of Sharp’s “scheme” in 1730 appears to have inspired the antiquaries to take stock of the coins they had seen in the years since the Metallographia Britannica project was first proposed. As J.G. Milne documents, Willis began both growing and cataloguing his collection of English coins in 1730 (1937, 449). Willis showed a number of his specimens at the Society’s meetings in 1731: most notably in February, a “Silver Crown Piece” purportedly dating to the reign of Henry VIII (SAL Minutes I.263).1 The SAL voted to have Vertue engrave Willis’s crown piece “on the same Plate with the other Coins of the Society” later that month (SAL Minutes I.265, I.267; see also Plate 1.20). Vertue shared proofs depicting the crown piece on 1 April 1731 and distributed the prints to members the following week (I.269-70). In between West’s presentation of Sharp’s “scheme” in November 1730 and Vertue’s presentations of the proofs for Plates 1.37 and 1.38 in February 1732, Sharp’s table for silver coins was emended to account for Willis’s crown piece. Sharp, for example, had identified Edward VI as the first monarch to mint a silver crown, but Plate 1.37 antedates the coin to Henry VIII (Nichols 1785, 6).
A comparison of the tables included in Nichols’s 1785 edition of the manuscript Sharp sent to Nicolson and Thoresby with Plates 1.37 and 1.38 suggests that the SAL made other substantial changes to Sharp’s data (Nichols 1785, 82-87). The version of Sharp’s tables published by Nichols in 1785, for example, includes coins issued up until 1688 and has blank entries prepared for successive monarchs ending with George I, whose reign began in 1714—the year of Sharp’s death; as mentioned previously, Plates 1.37 and 1.38 carry forward into the reign of George II, who ascended the throne in 1727 and reigned at the time of their publication. Likewise, the tables appearing in Nichols’s 1785 version include textual notes similar to those appearing at the bottom on Plates 1.37 and 1.38; again, however, substantial differences are readily apparent. The textual notes on Plates 1.37 and 1.38 are briefer than those appearing in Nichols’s version and take up different concerns. Plates 1.37 and 1.38 both remove the sections of Sharp’s tables documenting the coinage of the Commonwealth and consign that information to the text appearing at the bottom of the prints. Plates 1.37 and 1.38 also anticipate Plates 1.43 and 1.56 by presenting data (below the tables) relative to English coins minted abroad, whereas Sharp’s notes as printed by Nichols are largely silent on this facet of England’s numismatic history. Plates 1.37 and 1.38, therefore, reflect some of the practical as well as ideological difficulties presented by the abortive Metallographia Britannica project —but they would have been genuinely useful for amateur numismatists, offering at a quick glance both the ability to arrange a basic collection of coins and medals into chronological sequence and a form of visual reassurance for someone engaged in purchasing items for their collection; beware the dealer who claims to have a sovereign of Edward III and a bridge they’d like to sell you.
Subsequent Developments
Almost as soon as they were produced, however, Plates 1.37 and 1.38 were thought to be in error. Just a year after the plates were published, Willis wrote to the SAL about mistakes he believed he had found. Regarding Plate 1.37, for example, Willis claimed that neither Henry VII nor Edward VI coined halfpence or farthings (SAL Minutes I.290), and the Society would go on to publish Willis’s own “corrected” Table of Gold Coins of Kings of England in 1733—but it turns out that Willis was here also in error; those coins were, in fact, minted during both kings’ reigns. Meanwhile, Folkes took an increasing interest in the activities of the SAL in 1735, following his return from an extended tour of Europe (Haycock 2008). In January of 1735/6, Folkes read a dissertation he had written on the “Weights & Values of the Antient Coins” at two meetings of the SAL (SAL Minutes II.138-139); in April, the Society ordered 500 copies of Folkes’s dissertation to be printed for its membership (SAL Minutes II.174). That year, Folkes also published his Table of Gold Coins (1736) and “hope[d] the observations” of his fellow antiquaries would “correct [his] mistakes”; Willis responded by identifying several supposed errors in Folkes’s work (Roos 2019, 211).
In 1744, the SAL agreed to help Folkes produce a project not unlike the Metallographia Britannica by promising to pay for the engravings; Stukeley, reportedly, spoke out against this plan (Evans 1956, 95). Folkes began revising his table of gold coins and published a new version along with a separate table for the silver in 1745. On 13 February 1746, Folkes showed the SAL “a Scheem [sic] of the English Gold & Silver Coins” he was preparing for his omnibus publication, and in 1750 he was elected President of the SAL—but Folkes’s plan for a comprehensive history of British coinage featuring “near fifty Plates” never materialized before his death in 1754 (SAL Minutes V.54; Roos 2019, 194). Evans explains that the Society’s involvement with Folkes’s numismatics turned out to be a “bad bargain”; the plates related to the history of English coins would finally be published in 1763, but the SAL never managed to produce the kind of Metallographia Britannica its members had envisioned in the 1720s (1956, 96). Within the contexts of this long history of ambitious but frustrated attempts to impose order on numismatic studies, Plates 1.35-1.36 preserve the Metallographia Britannica’s goal of establishing a comprehensive and authoritative system to discipline what persisted as an unruly field of study.
That Willis and Folkes kept “correcting” and publishing new versions of their tables shows how difficult it was to impose order onto numismatic history. Along with new discoveries, complexities relative to metal, weight, and counterfeits could thwart antiquaries’ attempts to establish a stable and accurate record of English coinage. Sharp recognized this, too. When Sharp prepared his notes on England’s coinage for Nicholson and Thoresby, for example, William III had recently attempted to redress the widespread problem of clipping and counterfeiting, also noted in Evelyn’s Numismata, with a “great recoinage” in 1696; accordingly, Sharp was at some pains to explain the absolute and relative value of coins’ metal and weight—concerns that also characterized Folkes’s metrological approach (Roos 2021 196-197; see also Plate 1.69). The issue of coins’ value was both practical and ideological. As Leake put it in 1726, “there is no surer Symptom of a Consumption in State than the Corruption of Money” (v). “Hence it was,” he continues, that the decline of the Roman empire was “visibly known, most by the gradual Alteration of their Coin” (v). Leake admits that Britain’s monarchs had also been “reduced to the Necessity of countenancing base Money” from time to time, yet he determined that Britain had preserved its “Publick Faith” in coinage better than other European countries (vi). In any regard, Leake attested, a coin’s “extrinsick value” didn’t matter: only its “intrinsick Value,” as determined by the “Quantity” and “Proportion of Commodities” that it could purchase (vi).
Antiquaries shared Leake’s concern with coins’ value at the time of their original production while their publics also struggled to determine what old coins were worth in the present. Notably, the digitized copy in Eighteenth-Century Collections Online (ECCO) of Ives’s edition of Sharp’s notes includes a tipped-in manuscript letter (1756) attesting that antiquarian histories of “our [E]nglish coins” had been “extremely deficient in giving the young collector proper lights and information relating to the value of each King’s money” (Ives 1773, between 28-29). The second page of this document records what old coins were worth based on how many had been sold at auction “within these fifteen years” and for how much. The letter adds that such data are useful not only for collectors but also for “goldsmiths refiners and all dealers in silver” who were apt to toss old coins “into the melting pot” without recognizing their “value” on the antiquities market (between 28-29). The letter averages coins’ market values for each monarch’s reign and eschews “set[ting] forth the value of each separate coin,” which depends on both the quality of “its preservation,” its scarcity, and the “generosity of the purchaser” as much as it does on the coin’s weight or metallic composition (between 28-29).
Conclusion
Thus, specters of unstable valuations in a range of practical, historical, and ideological registers inevitably haunt the tables depicted on Plates 1.37 and 1.38, which were published in the wake of high-profile financial scandals like the South Sea Bubble and anxieties over credit that characterized the new English nation of shopkeepers, stockjobbers, and merchants. As they appear in Vetusta Monumenta, Sharp's tables do not attempt to parse old coins’ worth in terms of their metal, weight, or purchasing power—or their present market value. Rather, they simply chart which coins were first minted in which reigns. Plates 1.37 and 1.38 thereby plot a reassuring if generalized narrative not only of national and economic progress but also of antiquarian research. Britain appears to grow wealthier in Sharp’s evolving “scheme” as more types of coins appear to issue forth not only from the nation’s historical mints but also from the antiquaries’ research efforts, which produce both genuine and spurious numismatic discoveries.
At the same time, Plates 1.37 and 1.38 implicitly rebut the common critique that antiquaries were overly enamored with obsolete, rusted coins stripped of real purchasing power. Although the chronological arrangement of coins under the names of the monarchs who minted them was entirely conventional, Vertue’s design is more streamlined compared to Willis’s and Folkes’s tables as well as the version of Sharp’s tables rendered by Nichols. In this way, Plates 1.37 and 1.38 reaffirm the value of numismatic study and collection by subsuming coins’ moralizing capabilities to their mnemonic functions (Lake 2020, 81-84). As eighteenth-century commentators claimed, a numismatic cabinet afforded the historical recall of the order of succession as well as the most important historical events that occurred during each ruler’s reign. Coins and medals also conveyed what Evelyn termed the “character” of the rulers whose faces their obverses depicted: personal qualities that numismatic enthusiasts should either admire and imitate—or spurn (1697, 68). As the relegation of Commonwealth coinage to the text appearing below the tables on Plates 1.37 and 1.38 suggests, however, numismatic objects did not always yield coherent moral responses; the lessons they offered often aligned with the ideological convictions of their collectors.
Vertue would explore the tensions around numismatic objects’ moral implications more fully in Plate 1.55 as well as in a project he would shortly begin after the publication of Plates 1.37 and 1.38 with the Knapton brothers, the Heads of the Kings of England (1733-36), where portraiture invites a more sustained scrutiny of rulers’ claims to virtue and legitimacy. Here, however, in Plates 1.37 and 1.38, the faces of Britain’s rulers are not depicted. Monarchs are listed rather than visualized, and successive reigns proceed without interruption in lockstep with increasing numismatic specimens—like a perfectly-ordered catalogue for a cabinet of coins and medals that admits neither anomalies nor counterfeits while continuing to accumulate. A coherent nationalist, historical narrative for Britain may be vexed but it is not toppled by the supplementary text on Plates 1.37 and 1.38 attesting to histories of domestic unrest and foreign entanglements. Plates 1.37 and 1.38 stabilize Britain’s history by presenting a tabulated visualization of its coinage, surrounded by Vertue’s straight, spacious columns and framed by a border of bay leaves that grow in sturdy, undulating symmetry. That leafy frame is itself enclosed by a finely hatched band that resembles the milled edge of a well-struck coin. No clipping, corruption, or confusion touches these tables, which achieve a clarity and simplicity in design that the Society’s numismatic research and British history itself often failed to realize.
Notes:
[1]: Willis’s coin is in the Heberden Coin Room of the Ashmolean Museum (HCR38914), where it is classified as a “pattern for a silver crown” (see also: Loveday 1905).
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