Spink
Auction 23104 31 Mar 2023
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NGC MS63 | *Top Pop* | Anne (1702-1714), "Swift's Petition for the British Copper Coinage to the Lord High Treasurer, Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford", A Medallic Gold Pattern for a Farthing, 1713, Commemorating the Historic Act of Union of England and Scotland, an extraordinary personal striking after John Croker and Sir Isaac Newton at the Royal Mint, c. 1738, before Arundell's confiscation and destruction of the dies at the Tower of London, ANNA • DEI • GRATIA • draped bust 'A' three-quarters left, with beaded hair, toothed border and linear circle, rev. en médaille, BRITANNIA • 1713 • The Queen personified as Britannia seated left on Globe, wearing loose drapery, holding oval shield inscribed with Cross of St. George and St. Andrew, spear resting beside, olive branch in right hand, double exergual line below, thicker inner line touching tops of legend, edge plain on a thin flan, 5.95g [92.0grns // 3 dwt 20 grns], 23.7mm., 12h (Snelling [1766], Pl. 8, no. 5; Tyssen [1802], 2743; Ruding [1817] -; Till [1837], no. 3; H W Henfrey, type E; Montagu 11 [Fourth Portion, lot 148] = Murdoch 884 = Huth 586 = Brigg = Hewitt 391 this coin; Peck [BNJ, 1958], Group 3, O4*/Rb, no. 22a; Peck 22 = BMC 751 this coin mentioned [cf. Pl. 16, J]; BM 1935.0401.8229 same obverse die; W&R 61 this coin), faint traces of doubling in legends highly reminiscent of Royal Mint Pattern Strikings for contemporary Hanoverian gold specie and the Cromwellian Half-Broads restruck by J S Tanner in 1738; nevertheless with faint cabinet friction and inconsequential marks to rim, otherwise splendidly lustrous with brilliance across gloriously original fields, a truly sublime auriferous canon by the celebrated 18th Century medallist John Croker, conceived by him at the behest of Jonathan Swift at the apogee of national patriotic fervour following the historic Act of Union of England and Scotland and Peace of Utrecht, all whilst the Royal Mint was under the Mastership of its most famous comptroller Sir Isaac Newton; an indisputably storied British numismatic rarity and much-like Thomas Simon's famous 1663 'Petition Crown' - prized from inception by connoisseurs and 'Ruding's vulgar collector' alike; resulting in at least one prison sentence! Of the highest rarity, especially in this metal with only two specimens known; the other permanently impounded in the British Museum collection. With a matchless pedigree and the indisputable 'Queen of Rarities' within this historically-lauded and prohibitively exclusive four-coin series; now returning to public auction for the first time in over 50 years; and thus an unprecedented opportunity for the metaverse-refined, globally-astute but still privately-minded cognoscente of today, in NGC 'St Helier' holder, righteously graded MS63 (Cert. #6769435-005).
Provenance
The St. Helier Collection of English Gold Coins,
'A highly important collection of Patterns struck in Gold', Glendining, 13 April 1972, lot 391 - a pièce de plaisir, struck from somewhat rusty dies but brilliant proof surface, extremely rare - £620 [Spink for St. Helier],
Capt Vivian Hewitt, collection purchased en bloc by Spink, 1967,
M A Brigg [a.k.a. 'North Country Collector'], portion of collection purchased by Baldwin, by 1943,
R Huth, First Portion, Sotheby's, 4-7 April 1927, lot 586 - brilliant and very rare in gold - £29.0.0 [Seaby for Brigg],
J G Murdoch, Second Portion, Sotheby's, 8-13 June 1903, lot 883 - "a beautiful impression, very rare" [Pl. XIV] - £12.5.0 [Spink for Huth],
Montagu, Fourth Portion, Sotheby's, 15-17 July 1897, lot 148 - "Pattern Farthing, 1713, struck in gold, ANNA. DEI. GRATIA., draped bust of the Queen to left, wearing pearl fillet in hair, similar to bust on Pattern Halfpenny, rev. BRITANNIA 1713 (date in legend), Queen with attributes of Britannia seated to left, broad border on either side (11), extremely fine and rare - £15.0.0 [Spink for Murdoch]
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https://www.ngccoin.uk/certlookup/6769435-005/63/
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"The Lord Treasurer quarrelled with me at Court for being four days without dining with him; so I dined there to-day, and he has at last fallen in with my project (as he calls it) of coining halfpence and farthings, with devices, like medals, in honour of the Queen, every year changing the device. I wish it may be done." Jonathan Swift, Letter LVIII to Mrs Rebecca Dingley, London, 4 January 1712/13, ,
Queen Anne's accession on 8 March 1702 witnessed a glut of copper coinage in the London economy, and guaranteed an almost permanent ban on the striking of new specie during her rule. This embargo was overseen by the new Master of the Mint, Isaac Newton, whose renown had grown ever since the publication of his 'Principia' on the three laws of motion in 1687. However his appointment as Warden to the Royal Mint came through his separate experimentation with alchemy, a skill that proved useful during the Great Recoinage in 1696. His tight comptrollership of the specific tolerances of each coin has forever after resulted in a contemporary specie marred by planchet adjustment marks - Newton's numismatic legacy was in effect a challenge to collectors to find a uniformly struck-up Williamite coin!
, ,
His elevation to Master on 25 December 1699 following the death of Thomas Neale saw him inherit an unassailable problem with the assaying of pure copper. Thus far the technology had proven beyond the horse-drawn capabilities of the 17th Century mint who could neither roll, nor properly test the blanks they could even produce. Therefore since April 1694, 700 tonnes of pre-made blanks were provided by Sir Joseph Herne, Sir Francis Parry, George Clark, Abel Slaney and Daniel Barton. In 1698, a petition by the merchants of Southwark bemoaned the abuses of these patentees for their evident production of base copper coin, and worse still, their flooding of the London market. This precipitated a one-year hiatus on further production from 24 June 1698. By final lapse of the contract in 1701, an extraordinary £137,200 of this copper coin had been struck, more than sufficient for the next decade of service to the British economy.
, ,
By 1712, however, the clamour for small specie had returned, and with it several petitions. The first published by Beardwell of Blackfriars in 1710, re-championed the cause of tin money in a circulated printed address: 'A humble and Seasonable Proposal to the Queen to raise Money without any Tax sufficient to rebuild her Royal Palace of White-Hall in Greater Magnificence than ever'. The imagined dialogue between an out-of-work coin-engineer; a shopkeeper; a market woman and a beggar extolled the virtues of a return to a 'small farthing, light and clean as silver that cannot be counterfeited without loss and immediate discovery.' Fanciful and unrealistic as that claim may have been at the time, these accounts are phenomenally enlightening. We hear of the Shopkeeper's son 'once being employed at Somers Key to make the Tin Farthings of King James that were cryed down as Popish imitations for being too heavy', which comes in sharp contrast to the fearful market woman who when asked 'pray let me see your farthings', is horrified to discover from the coin-engineer and shopkeeper that most of her money, which are actually halfpennies, are 'dull, nasty thick counterfeits'. But as the coin-engineer mourns, 'there is such a number of foul cast Half-pence that in 40 shillings, you must take 20 shillings in those Half-pence, or else you can receive no money.' The coin engineer then regails us of his past work at mints in Holland and France before employment at the Tower which eventually took him with James' army to Ireland following the Glorious Revolution in 1688. His evident adeptness with the edging technology (castaing machines) to prevent counterfeiting reveals his insider knowledge of William III's unfulfilled plans for a new tin coinage after 1695. This forms the basis for his appeal to Queen Anne in 1710, for which he produces the evidence of the market woman, who is 'forced to take Farthings about me, but are so heavy they tear out my pockets on the way home and [en]cumber me badly.' When pressed on whether the petition would be successful for the poorest, the engineer proposed: "Suppose the Queen should cause small Farthings as fine as silver to be coined, do you think they would then carry those?", the beggar chimes in: "O God bless Her Majesty, I think they would and she could not do a Greater Charity to the Poor, and all small Dealers, for then every body would carry more plenty of them in their Pockets."
, ,
The appeal however would ultimately fall on deaf ears, for Newton, since knighted for services to his Parliamentary constituency of the University of Cambridge in 1705, was pre-occupied only with a small coinage in copper that but for its seignorage, would have the intrinsic metal value equivalent to face. His incorrigible stance, driven by an ambition to reduce Mint production costs ultimately overlooked the essential need for tin-alloy in the specie to ensure the efficiency of the Mint's aged rolling mills. The few trials Newton did muster would all fail the only available test available 'by the hammer', a limited technology that would still be in use at the conversion to bronze coinage in 1860. Landing the ignominy of a failed Pyx in 1710 (later overturned on appeal), would suffer a similar fate with his few copper trials at the hands of copper-smith James Bertie. Denounced as 'coarse copper', the prepared planchets ultimately cracked under striking pressure leaving the wide-spread production of copper specie for Queen Anne all but abandoned. In April 1717, Newton finally relented and purchased new copper blanks for the production of George I's first 'dump issue' copper specie.
, ,
"I can calculate the movement of the celestial bodies, but not the madness of men" Newton famously quipped, and much like the South Sea Bubble that cost him some £20,000 in 1720, the coining of copper Farthings and Halfpennies would equally overwhelm him. However as Peck notes in his article for the BNJ, it is evident that at least some of the corpus of Halfpennies and Farthings survive from his own experiments. 'Termed Group 1 and 2', they comprise the double-headed issues and those showing signs of rust, but are clearly distinct from the Group 3 issues with new letter puncheons which are presumed to be the strikings cause by Mr Charles Bush of the Ordnance Office of the Tower of London after he obtained the 'dies for the Halfpenny' and caused some to be struck off before they were confiscated and destroyed by warrant of then Master of the Mint, Richard Arundell (1737-1745). As Peck notes, mysteriously few examples of the Halfpenny survive that can be so clearly attributed as 'restrikes', particularly as off-metal issues, although the clumsy repurposing of Halfcrown edge lettering with the regnal year 'DVODECIMO' opens the tantalising possibility that some may have been struck during the twelfth year of King George II (i.e. 1739), if not that of Queen Anne (1713).
, ,
The first mention of a copper coinage in the numismatic review of Queen Anne's reign comes from the observations of Stephen Martin Leake in his seminal publication: 'Nummi Britannici Historia: An Historical Account of the English Money', (W. Meadows, London, 1726, pp. 142): "There was likewise Half-pence and Farthings of two different kinds, struck Anno 1713, and 1714 of fine Copper, but there were so very few of these coin'd, that they are preserved as great rarities; on one side is represented her Majesty's Head, ANNA. DEI. GRATIA. on the Reverse Britannia, circumscribed BRITANNIA. 1713, the other of 1714 has the Date under Britannia." [sic]
, ,
This quite innocent notation about 'great rarities' would inadvertently give rise to an extraordinary folklore surrounding the issue that would endure nationwide for more than two centuries and constantly plague the numismatic discourse amongst servants of the Department of Coins and Medals at the British Museum. Such mythology would not be so readily accepted by another contemporary Richard Dodsley, however:
"So modern a Thing as a Queen Anne's Farthing has risen to the Dignity of a Curiosity, merely because there were but a few of them struck. Some industrious Artists, who would have the greatest Scruple of counterfeiting the current Coin of the Kingdom, have been so blinded by their Love of Virtu, as to imitate these rare Farthings, looking upon them solely as Curiosities. I just mention this for the Sake of those laborious Medallists; because the present Honourable Attorney-General, tho' a very Learned Man, is no Antiquarian, and might possibly be of the Opinion, that those admirable Copies would come under the Penalties of the Statute against Clipping and Coining.' The Museum or the Literary and Historical Register, Volume the First (London, 1746, pp. 47-48) [sic]
, ,
Dodsley's input came after the first public auction appearance of Queen Anne's Farthing at the dispersal of Leonard Wooddeson's cabinet, late member of the Board of Works, by Aaron Lambe in Pall Mall on 20 March 1733/34 [lots 34 and 90]. Intriguingly the second listing herein described her Farthing as being 'made of lead'. White metal or more correctly tin specie had of course been phased out by Act of Parliament on 17 April 1694 during the co-reign of her predecessors. Whilst examples of this coinage have been recorded as patterns 'struck in tin' (Archbishop Sharp, 1977, lot 274), it is tantalising to think that Dodsley's greatest fear may have been true inside two decades of the original production.
, ,
It is possible that Snelling's mention of Mr Bush's possession of the Halfpenny dies also extended to Farthing matrices, for the prevalence of restrikes in Gold and Silver extends across three Patterns for 1713, and one of 1714 and on multiple weight standards. Whilst the Halfpenny was conceived as an alleviation to the problem of 'weighty small change', a renewed farthing production would also serve an important purpose in the rumbling political debate about how best to commemorate Queen Anne's reign and her notable victories over the Spanish and French. Jonathan's Swift diverse petition championed these designs, as well as those heralding the Act of Union of England and Scotland in 1707, in his treatise to the 1st Earl of Oxford. Intriguingly it is also the Oxford family collection that affords us the earliest mention of a Queen Anne Farthing struck in gold and probably also the necessary 'smoking gun' to corroborate large swathes of Peck's hypothesis. , ,
At the sale of the 2nd Earl's collection in Christopher Cock's salerooms (18-23 March 1741/42), an example of 'Her Farthing, struck in Gold of weight 6 dwt 4 grns' featured as lot 172. Harley's personal assent to the coinage perhaps resulted in this memento being struck by Newton. However the date of sale does not entirely eradicate the possibility of this actually being a later restriking; especially as the youngest coin in the Oxford cabinet was a 1739 Halfcrown. Another early beneficiary of these exclusive gold Pattern strikings was the Honourable Bryan Fairfax, whose sale in 1751 included a further example of 'a pattern of her farthing, 1713 - 4dwt 2grns' curiously lotted alongside 'a ten shilling piece of Oliver - 3dwt 0grns'. It is inferred from this bizarre lotting practice, that Queen Anne's coin was actually conceived at the Royal Mint at the same time as the famous Tanner re-strikings of the Cromwellian Half-Broad. The dies for this latter coin, created from Simon's original puncheons, had been ordered in 1738 by Richard Arundell, then Master, for the purposes of 'gifts for his friends'. The penalty for illicit possession of dies under the 1696 Recoinage Act was high treason for Charles Bush. Arundell personally overseeing the production of such restrikings, including that in the cabinet of the Lord Chancellor's son is a far more conceivable notion. At Dr Richard Meade's dispersal in 1755, another remarkable 1713 Pattern appeared for the first time; the 'PAX MISSA PER ORBEM' issue, struck to commemorate the Peace of Utrecht. Traditionally referred to as one of the four Pattern Farthing designs, Matthew Prior's letter to Viscount Bolingbroke in May 1713 actually confirms this to be his own personal contest to the official 'Treaty of Utrecht' medal by John Croker, simply struck on a Farthing planchet but a heavier weight standard. By great fortune, an example of this in gold has also resurfaced in recent times, firstly at a public auction in Queensland (IAG Signature 96, 22-23 October 2022, lot 404 - AU$52,000); before returning to London with a favourable third-party grade and an optimistic six-figure re-sale estimate., ,
The most enduring mythology about the Queen Anne Farthing in the centuries since these seminal sales has been the extraordinary idea 'only three coins were produced before the die irreparably broke.' So infectious was this folklore, that it would be presented as incontestable evidence in a court of law; prompt a nationwide frenzy; and create widespread disappointment amongst beneficiaries left worthless heirlooms that had been preposterously overvalued. However like with the scoliotic discovery in King Richard III's spine, there appears to be a large grain of truth to this propagated falsehood. Whilst the surviving count of Queen Anne Farthings extends into three figures across all metals (gold, silver, copper, brass, tin and lead), the present corpus for gold strikings stands at just twelve known coins, of which at least half are impounded in National Institutions (British Museum = 5; Hunterian Museum = 1), with the remaining six largely untraced since the Hewitt dispersal (1972), that is of course until the re-emergence of the present example today. In the extensive, but perhaps not entirely exhaustive studies of Charles Wilson Peck, only two examples of the present type or 'first issue' have ever been recorded. The other specimen has been impounded in the British Museum since the Samuel Tyssen sale (April 1802, lot 2743). The remaining varieties have either three, if not four specimens extant. In any respect, the present coin is therefore not just unique to commerce, but also the rarest of the already prohibitively exclusive Queen Anne Pattern Farthing series in gold., ,
To date, only five individuals have ever achieved the monumental feat of owning all 'four types' of Queen Anne's Farthing in Gold:
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Samuel Tyssen (1802)
John Gloag Murdoch (1903)
Reginald Huth (1927)
M A Brigg (1943)*
Captain Vivian Hewitt (1967)
,
*Although public sale records do not corroborate Brigg's claim, we have it on the good authority of Charles Wilson Peck.
, ,
Incredibly Hyman Montagu, the legendary 19th Century collector and author of 'The Copper, Tin, and Bronze Coinage of England' failed in the task. With the opportunity of two varieties appearing at auction in the same month for the first time in over half-a-century, it is beholden upon the nerves of today's connoisseur to rise to this immense challenge, particularly as this offering sits at the very top of the rarity tree.
Estimate: £20000 - £30000
Provenance
The St. Helier Collection of English Gold Coins,
'A highly important collection of Patterns struck in Gold', Glendining, 13 April 1972, lot 391 - a pièce de plaisir, struck from somewhat rusty dies but brilliant proof surface, extremely rare - £620 [Spink for St. Helier],
Capt Vivian Hewitt, collection purchased en bloc by Spink, 1967,
M A Brigg [a.k.a. 'North Country Collector'], portion of collection purchased by Baldwin, by 1943,
R Huth, First Portion, Sotheby's, 4-7 April 1927, lot 586 - brilliant and very rare in gold - £29.0.0 [Seaby for Brigg],
J G Murdoch, Second Portion, Sotheby's, 8-13 June 1903, lot 883 - "a beautiful impression, very rare" [Pl. XIV] - £12.5.0 [Spink for Huth],
Montagu, Fourth Portion, Sotheby's, 15-17 July 1897, lot 148 - "Pattern Farthing, 1713, struck in gold, ANNA. DEI. GRATIA., draped bust of the Queen to left, wearing pearl fillet in hair, similar to bust on Pattern Halfpenny, rev. BRITANNIA 1713 (date in legend), Queen with attributes of Britannia seated to left, broad border on either side (11), extremely fine and rare - £15.0.0 [Spink for Murdoch]
, ,
https://www.ngccoin.uk/certlookup/6769435-005/63/
, ,
"The Lord Treasurer quarrelled with me at Court for being four days without dining with him; so I dined there to-day, and he has at last fallen in with my project (as he calls it) of coining halfpence and farthings, with devices, like medals, in honour of the Queen, every year changing the device. I wish it may be done." Jonathan Swift, Letter LVIII to Mrs Rebecca Dingley, London, 4 January 1712/13, ,
Queen Anne's accession on 8 March 1702 witnessed a glut of copper coinage in the London economy, and guaranteed an almost permanent ban on the striking of new specie during her rule. This embargo was overseen by the new Master of the Mint, Isaac Newton, whose renown had grown ever since the publication of his 'Principia' on the three laws of motion in 1687. However his appointment as Warden to the Royal Mint came through his separate experimentation with alchemy, a skill that proved useful during the Great Recoinage in 1696. His tight comptrollership of the specific tolerances of each coin has forever after resulted in a contemporary specie marred by planchet adjustment marks - Newton's numismatic legacy was in effect a challenge to collectors to find a uniformly struck-up Williamite coin!
, ,
His elevation to Master on 25 December 1699 following the death of Thomas Neale saw him inherit an unassailable problem with the assaying of pure copper. Thus far the technology had proven beyond the horse-drawn capabilities of the 17th Century mint who could neither roll, nor properly test the blanks they could even produce. Therefore since April 1694, 700 tonnes of pre-made blanks were provided by Sir Joseph Herne, Sir Francis Parry, George Clark, Abel Slaney and Daniel Barton. In 1698, a petition by the merchants of Southwark bemoaned the abuses of these patentees for their evident production of base copper coin, and worse still, their flooding of the London market. This precipitated a one-year hiatus on further production from 24 June 1698. By final lapse of the contract in 1701, an extraordinary £137,200 of this copper coin had been struck, more than sufficient for the next decade of service to the British economy.
, ,
By 1712, however, the clamour for small specie had returned, and with it several petitions. The first published by Beardwell of Blackfriars in 1710, re-championed the cause of tin money in a circulated printed address: 'A humble and Seasonable Proposal to the Queen to raise Money without any Tax sufficient to rebuild her Royal Palace of White-Hall in Greater Magnificence than ever'. The imagined dialogue between an out-of-work coin-engineer; a shopkeeper; a market woman and a beggar extolled the virtues of a return to a 'small farthing, light and clean as silver that cannot be counterfeited without loss and immediate discovery.' Fanciful and unrealistic as that claim may have been at the time, these accounts are phenomenally enlightening. We hear of the Shopkeeper's son 'once being employed at Somers Key to make the Tin Farthings of King James that were cryed down as Popish imitations for being too heavy', which comes in sharp contrast to the fearful market woman who when asked 'pray let me see your farthings', is horrified to discover from the coin-engineer and shopkeeper that most of her money, which are actually halfpennies, are 'dull, nasty thick counterfeits'. But as the coin-engineer mourns, 'there is such a number of foul cast Half-pence that in 40 shillings, you must take 20 shillings in those Half-pence, or else you can receive no money.' The coin engineer then regails us of his past work at mints in Holland and France before employment at the Tower which eventually took him with James' army to Ireland following the Glorious Revolution in 1688. His evident adeptness with the edging technology (castaing machines) to prevent counterfeiting reveals his insider knowledge of William III's unfulfilled plans for a new tin coinage after 1695. This forms the basis for his appeal to Queen Anne in 1710, for which he produces the evidence of the market woman, who is 'forced to take Farthings about me, but are so heavy they tear out my pockets on the way home and [en]cumber me badly.' When pressed on whether the petition would be successful for the poorest, the engineer proposed: "Suppose the Queen should cause small Farthings as fine as silver to be coined, do you think they would then carry those?", the beggar chimes in: "O God bless Her Majesty, I think they would and she could not do a Greater Charity to the Poor, and all small Dealers, for then every body would carry more plenty of them in their Pockets."
, ,
The appeal however would ultimately fall on deaf ears, for Newton, since knighted for services to his Parliamentary constituency of the University of Cambridge in 1705, was pre-occupied only with a small coinage in copper that but for its seignorage, would have the intrinsic metal value equivalent to face. His incorrigible stance, driven by an ambition to reduce Mint production costs ultimately overlooked the essential need for tin-alloy in the specie to ensure the efficiency of the Mint's aged rolling mills. The few trials Newton did muster would all fail the only available test available 'by the hammer', a limited technology that would still be in use at the conversion to bronze coinage in 1860. Landing the ignominy of a failed Pyx in 1710 (later overturned on appeal), would suffer a similar fate with his few copper trials at the hands of copper-smith James Bertie. Denounced as 'coarse copper', the prepared planchets ultimately cracked under striking pressure leaving the wide-spread production of copper specie for Queen Anne all but abandoned. In April 1717, Newton finally relented and purchased new copper blanks for the production of George I's first 'dump issue' copper specie.
, ,
"I can calculate the movement of the celestial bodies, but not the madness of men" Newton famously quipped, and much like the South Sea Bubble that cost him some £20,000 in 1720, the coining of copper Farthings and Halfpennies would equally overwhelm him. However as Peck notes in his article for the BNJ, it is evident that at least some of the corpus of Halfpennies and Farthings survive from his own experiments. 'Termed Group 1 and 2', they comprise the double-headed issues and those showing signs of rust, but are clearly distinct from the Group 3 issues with new letter puncheons which are presumed to be the strikings cause by Mr Charles Bush of the Ordnance Office of the Tower of London after he obtained the 'dies for the Halfpenny' and caused some to be struck off before they were confiscated and destroyed by warrant of then Master of the Mint, Richard Arundell (1737-1745). As Peck notes, mysteriously few examples of the Halfpenny survive that can be so clearly attributed as 'restrikes', particularly as off-metal issues, although the clumsy repurposing of Halfcrown edge lettering with the regnal year 'DVODECIMO' opens the tantalising possibility that some may have been struck during the twelfth year of King George II (i.e. 1739), if not that of Queen Anne (1713).
, ,
The first mention of a copper coinage in the numismatic review of Queen Anne's reign comes from the observations of Stephen Martin Leake in his seminal publication: 'Nummi Britannici Historia: An Historical Account of the English Money', (W. Meadows, London, 1726, pp. 142): "There was likewise Half-pence and Farthings of two different kinds, struck Anno 1713, and 1714 of fine Copper, but there were so very few of these coin'd, that they are preserved as great rarities; on one side is represented her Majesty's Head, ANNA. DEI. GRATIA. on the Reverse Britannia, circumscribed BRITANNIA. 1713, the other of 1714 has the Date under Britannia." [sic]
, ,
This quite innocent notation about 'great rarities' would inadvertently give rise to an extraordinary folklore surrounding the issue that would endure nationwide for more than two centuries and constantly plague the numismatic discourse amongst servants of the Department of Coins and Medals at the British Museum. Such mythology would not be so readily accepted by another contemporary Richard Dodsley, however:
"So modern a Thing as a Queen Anne's Farthing has risen to the Dignity of a Curiosity, merely because there were but a few of them struck. Some industrious Artists, who would have the greatest Scruple of counterfeiting the current Coin of the Kingdom, have been so blinded by their Love of Virtu, as to imitate these rare Farthings, looking upon them solely as Curiosities. I just mention this for the Sake of those laborious Medallists; because the present Honourable Attorney-General, tho' a very Learned Man, is no Antiquarian, and might possibly be of the Opinion, that those admirable Copies would come under the Penalties of the Statute against Clipping and Coining.' The Museum or the Literary and Historical Register, Volume the First (London, 1746, pp. 47-48) [sic]
, ,
Dodsley's input came after the first public auction appearance of Queen Anne's Farthing at the dispersal of Leonard Wooddeson's cabinet, late member of the Board of Works, by Aaron Lambe in Pall Mall on 20 March 1733/34 [lots 34 and 90]. Intriguingly the second listing herein described her Farthing as being 'made of lead'. White metal or more correctly tin specie had of course been phased out by Act of Parliament on 17 April 1694 during the co-reign of her predecessors. Whilst examples of this coinage have been recorded as patterns 'struck in tin' (Archbishop Sharp, 1977, lot 274), it is tantalising to think that Dodsley's greatest fear may have been true inside two decades of the original production.
, ,
It is possible that Snelling's mention of Mr Bush's possession of the Halfpenny dies also extended to Farthing matrices, for the prevalence of restrikes in Gold and Silver extends across three Patterns for 1713, and one of 1714 and on multiple weight standards. Whilst the Halfpenny was conceived as an alleviation to the problem of 'weighty small change', a renewed farthing production would also serve an important purpose in the rumbling political debate about how best to commemorate Queen Anne's reign and her notable victories over the Spanish and French. Jonathan's Swift diverse petition championed these designs, as well as those heralding the Act of Union of England and Scotland in 1707, in his treatise to the 1st Earl of Oxford. Intriguingly it is also the Oxford family collection that affords us the earliest mention of a Queen Anne Farthing struck in gold and probably also the necessary 'smoking gun' to corroborate large swathes of Peck's hypothesis. , ,
At the sale of the 2nd Earl's collection in Christopher Cock's salerooms (18-23 March 1741/42), an example of 'Her Farthing, struck in Gold of weight 6 dwt 4 grns' featured as lot 172. Harley's personal assent to the coinage perhaps resulted in this memento being struck by Newton. However the date of sale does not entirely eradicate the possibility of this actually being a later restriking; especially as the youngest coin in the Oxford cabinet was a 1739 Halfcrown. Another early beneficiary of these exclusive gold Pattern strikings was the Honourable Bryan Fairfax, whose sale in 1751 included a further example of 'a pattern of her farthing, 1713 - 4dwt 2grns' curiously lotted alongside 'a ten shilling piece of Oliver - 3dwt 0grns'. It is inferred from this bizarre lotting practice, that Queen Anne's coin was actually conceived at the Royal Mint at the same time as the famous Tanner re-strikings of the Cromwellian Half-Broad. The dies for this latter coin, created from Simon's original puncheons, had been ordered in 1738 by Richard Arundell, then Master, for the purposes of 'gifts for his friends'. The penalty for illicit possession of dies under the 1696 Recoinage Act was high treason for Charles Bush. Arundell personally overseeing the production of such restrikings, including that in the cabinet of the Lord Chancellor's son is a far more conceivable notion. At Dr Richard Meade's dispersal in 1755, another remarkable 1713 Pattern appeared for the first time; the 'PAX MISSA PER ORBEM' issue, struck to commemorate the Peace of Utrecht. Traditionally referred to as one of the four Pattern Farthing designs, Matthew Prior's letter to Viscount Bolingbroke in May 1713 actually confirms this to be his own personal contest to the official 'Treaty of Utrecht' medal by John Croker, simply struck on a Farthing planchet but a heavier weight standard. By great fortune, an example of this in gold has also resurfaced in recent times, firstly at a public auction in Queensland (IAG Signature 96, 22-23 October 2022, lot 404 - AU$52,000); before returning to London with a favourable third-party grade and an optimistic six-figure re-sale estimate., ,
The most enduring mythology about the Queen Anne Farthing in the centuries since these seminal sales has been the extraordinary idea 'only three coins were produced before the die irreparably broke.' So infectious was this folklore, that it would be presented as incontestable evidence in a court of law; prompt a nationwide frenzy; and create widespread disappointment amongst beneficiaries left worthless heirlooms that had been preposterously overvalued. However like with the scoliotic discovery in King Richard III's spine, there appears to be a large grain of truth to this propagated falsehood. Whilst the surviving count of Queen Anne Farthings extends into three figures across all metals (gold, silver, copper, brass, tin and lead), the present corpus for gold strikings stands at just twelve known coins, of which at least half are impounded in National Institutions (British Museum = 5; Hunterian Museum = 1), with the remaining six largely untraced since the Hewitt dispersal (1972), that is of course until the re-emergence of the present example today. In the extensive, but perhaps not entirely exhaustive studies of Charles Wilson Peck, only two examples of the present type or 'first issue' have ever been recorded. The other specimen has been impounded in the British Museum since the Samuel Tyssen sale (April 1802, lot 2743). The remaining varieties have either three, if not four specimens extant. In any respect, the present coin is therefore not just unique to commerce, but also the rarest of the already prohibitively exclusive Queen Anne Pattern Farthing series in gold., ,
To date, only five individuals have ever achieved the monumental feat of owning all 'four types' of Queen Anne's Farthing in Gold:
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Samuel Tyssen (1802)
John Gloag Murdoch (1903)
Reginald Huth (1927)
M A Brigg (1943)*
Captain Vivian Hewitt (1967)
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*Although public sale records do not corroborate Brigg's claim, we have it on the good authority of Charles Wilson Peck.
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Incredibly Hyman Montagu, the legendary 19th Century collector and author of 'The Copper, Tin, and Bronze Coinage of England' failed in the task. With the opportunity of two varieties appearing at auction in the same month for the first time in over half-a-century, it is beholden upon the nerves of today's connoisseur to rise to this immense challenge, particularly as this offering sits at the very top of the rarity tree.
Estimate: £20000 - £30000