Read Ebook: Chats on Old Silver by Hayden Arthur

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Ebook has 850 lines and 64073 words, and 17 pages

In china the personal note is dominant--Josiah Wedgwood with his wooden leg smashing vases at Etruria with "This won't do for Josiah Wedgwood." Or Thomas Cookworthy dying of a broken heart in Virginia after his life's failure at Plymouth. Or the Brothers Elers with their secret underground telephone in Bradwell Wood in Staffordshire.

In silver ware the Elizabethan and the Stuart periods run parallel with furniture; the names of makers are rarely known. But in the eighteenth century besides Paul de Lamerie, Paul Storr, F. Kandler, Peter Archambo, Pierre Platel, and a few others the claim to fame of the individual silversmith has been obliterated by the heart-searchings of collectors for periods, such as the Higher Standard or the style termed "Queen Anne."

Among the human touches left there are fragments recorded which are interesting to collectors. Sir Thomas Gresham, the great London goldsmith in the middle sixteenth century, carried on business in Lombard Street at the sign of the Grasshopper. To this day there is a grasshopper as a weathercock behind the Royal Exchange.

There is Sir Robert Vyner, who made the coronation crown jewels for Charles II, afterwards stolen by Colonel Blood and scattered in the Minories, who was a goldsmith of Lombard Street. He entertained Charles II during his mayorality. Sir Robert, when he had well drunken, grew very familiar with the king, who wished to steal away without ceremony and proceed to his coach. But the mayor pursued him to Guildhall yard, and catching hold of him exclaimed with an oath, "Sir, you shall stay and take t' other bottle," and the Merry Monarch, true to his name, with a smile hummed the line of the old song:

"He that is drunk is as great as a king,"

and turned back to finish the bottle. We like this story. A piece of plate with Sir Robert Vyner's initials of the year 1675 would possess added value for this touch of nature which makes the whole world kin.

We give the inscription on Ellis Gamble's shop card, which is in a frame, termed by bookplate collectors "Chippendale." There is a full-length figure of a winged angel standing on a scroll, and the lettering is somewhat crowded below in English and in French:--

"Ellis Gamble, Goldsmith at the Golden Angel in Cranbourn Street, Leicester Fields, Makes Buys and Sells all sorts of Plate, Rings and Jewells, etc."

An interesting sidelight on makers' names is afforded by the various copper tokens which they struck, bearing their names and addresses. We append a short list of goldsmiths' tokens of the seventeenth century. They come from various parts of the country and from Ireland, and readers having seventeenth century silver bearing these initials may be able to identify the maker.

LONDON.

West Smithfeild Euodias Inman. his halfe Peny In Smithfeild Rounds. Gouldsmith.

Beech Lane . Elizabeth Wood In Beach Lane. 1656. E. W.

Seacole Lane . Samuell Chapell in Seacole Lane, 1671. The Goldsmiths' arms on reverse.

EXETER .

Samuell Calle Gouldsmith in Exon .

BATH .

Geo. Reve. Goldsmith In Bath. 1658. G. M. R.

OXFORD .

Will Robinson 1668 Gouldsmith in Oxon W. M. R.

DOVER .

Willian Keylocke In Dover. 1667. W M K

IRELAND.

Dublin . Io. Partington. Gouldsme. . Kinges head. Skinner Row, Dublin, 1d.

KILKENNY .

William Keovgh 1d. Kilkeny. Goldsmith .

A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door, And a word that shall echo for evermore! For, borne on the night-wind of the Past, Through all our history, to the last, In the hour of darkness and peril and need, The people will waken and listen to hear The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed, And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

From 25th March, 1697, till 1700 no plate was therefore assayed at any of the provincial centres.

In 1702 the town of Newcastle-upon-Tyne was appointed as an assay town with similar privileges and restrictions as in the above-mentioned cities.

The old standard of silver was .925, that is in every thousand parts only 75 were to be of alloy. The new standard was .959, that is only 41 parts of alloy could be legally used. This raised the standard of silver plate above that of the coin of the realm.

The new standard was the only legal standard for silver plate from March 1697 till 1720, when the old standard was revived and the higher standard marks of the Britannia and the lion's head erased were no longer compulsory. Silver plate then dropped to the same fineness as the coin of the realm. But if silversmiths desired to make silver of this higher standard they could do so, and such silver plate would receive the stamps at the assay offices, of the Britannia and the lion's head erased.

It is thus shown that the dates when silver plate must compulsorily bear the Higher Standard marks are between the years 1697 and 1720. The following note will be useful to collectors.

A piece of silver marked with the figure of Britannia and the lion's head erased may be an example falling under any of the following heads:--

Till the reign of Charles II our coin had been struck by a process as old as the thirteenth century. The metal was shaped with shears and stamped by the hammer. The inexactitude of such coinage became the opportunity for the clipper of coins. A mill was set up at the Tower of London which was worked by horses and superseded the human hand. The coins were exactly circular, their edges were inscribed with a legend, and clipping was thereby made apparently impossible. But the hammered coins and the milled coins were current together. The result was, as it always is, that the light and poorer coin drove the better one out of the current circulation. The milled crown new from the mint became more valuable for shipment abroad or for use in the crucible.

It may readily be imagined that such a state of things began to cripple trade. Merchants stipulated as to the quality of the coin in which they were to be paid. "The labourer found that the bit of metal which, when he received it, was called a shilling, would hardly, when he wanted to purchase a pot of beer or a loaf of rye bread, go as far as sixpence." Tonson the bookseller sends Dryden forty brass shillings. Another time he paid the poet in silver pieces that were so bad that they could not be passed.

This is not the place to enumerate the many foolish schemes that were propounded, some too costly, some unjust, some hazardous.

Locke and Newton brought their minds to bear on the subtleties of the question, and adopted the ideas of Dudley North, who died in 1693. His tract on the restoration of the currency is practically the same as that subsequently adopted.

William Lowndes, Secretary of the Treasury, Member of Parliament for the borough of Seaford, "a most respectable and industrious public servant," as Lord Macaulay terms him, was incapable of rising above the details of his office in order to cope with economic principles. "He was not in the least aware that a piece of metal with the King's head on it was a commodity of which the price was governed by the same laws which govern the price of metal fashioned into a spoon or a buckle, and that it was no more in the power of Parliament to make the kingdom richer by calling a crown a pound than to make the kingdom larger by calling a furlong a mile. He seriously believed, incredible as it may seem, that if the ounce of silver were divided into seven shillings instead of five, foreign nations would sell us their wines and their silks for a smaller number of ounces."

Locke recommended what Dudley North had advised, namely, that the King should issue a proclamation declaring hammered money should pass only by weight. What searching, branding, fining, burning, and hanging had failed to do would have been accomplished at once. The clipping of the hammered coin and the melting of the new milled coin to be made into silver plate would have ceased. But it had one objection. The loss would fall on the individual. Those in whose hands the clipped coin happened to be at a particular moment would bear the loss. But the loss in equity should be borne by the State which had allowed such evils to go unchecked.

It was suggested to remedy this that all clipped coin after a certain date would be exchanged for good coin at the mint. But it was soon realized that this would make clipping more profitable than ever.

A real remedy was devised but unhappily it fell through. A proclamation was to be prepared with great secrecy, and published simultaneously in all parts of the kingdom. This was to declare hammered coin should thenceforth only pass by weight. Every possessor of such coin could within three days deliver it in a sealed packet to the local authorities to be weighed and would receive a promissory note to receive from the Treasury the difference between the actual quantity of silver the pieces contained and the quantity they should have contained.

Anxious days followed in Parliament, but it was determined the public should bear the loss on the clipped coins. It was laid down that a time should be fixed when no clipped money should pass, except in payments to the Government, and that a later time should be fixed after which no clipped money should pass at all. The 4th of May, 1696, was named as the date on which the Government would cease to receive clipped money in payment of taxes.

Ten furnaces were erected in a garden behind the Treasury, which was then a part of Whitehall, and which lay between the Banqueting House and the river. Every day huge heaps of clipped and unrecognizable coins were here turned into ingots of silver and were sent off to the Mint at the Tower .

The scene may readily be imagined. The second of May 1696 had been fixed by Parliament as the last day in which the crowns, half-crowns, and shillings were to be received in payment of taxes for face value. The guards had to be called in to keep order. The Exchequer was besieged by a vast multitude from dawn to midnight. The Act provided that the money was to be brought in by before the 4th of May. The 3rd was a Sunday, therefore Saturday, the 2nd of May, was actually the last day.

During the next few months, as the issues of the new coinage were unduly slow, the tension was very great. The upper classes lived on credit. "Money exceeding scarce, so that none was paid or received: but all was on trust" . "Want of current money for smallest concerns even for daily provisions in the markets."

Undoubtedly it was a very anxious period for the Government. Malcontents stirred up the populace and tumults occurred in various parts of the country. Jacobite tracts were published advocating violent measures. William had strained his private credit in Holland to procure bread for the Army. But the crisis was weathered and the coinage question was settled.

It hardly needs an apology from the author to bring these facts tersely together before the reader who is interested in old English silver. The figure of Britannia and the lion's head erased belong to this troublous period. They come as a corollary to the coinage question, and they should provide the collector with food for thought whenever he sees them stamped upon silver in his possession. The standard of silver plate was raised as a further safeguard, in order that the clippers should have no incentive to melt down the new coinage.

From 1697 to 1720 the silver plate, being compulsorily by law of a higher standard than the coin of the realm, stood as a safeguard against the return to clipping.

The Britannia standard, therefore, to collectors should be something more than rare. It should induce reflective thought as to the successive stages the troublous disputations, the suggested remedies, and the awful punishments which came as a prelude to the establishment of this Higher Standard.

At a much later period the figure of Britannia was stamped upon silver plate, but the practice was not very extensive, and the Britannia stamp is used without the accompanying lion's head erased. The date when this mark appears is at a period subsequent to 1784 and relates to the drawback or exemption from duty on silver plate exported.

From 1784, therefore, on English and Scottish silver the duty mark of the head of the reigning sovereign appears on all silver plate, stamped in an oval escutcheon.

The various sovereigns' heads were used down to 1890, when the duty was discontinued and the mark abolished.

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