Coin flipping

Adventures in the British Museum archive, part 96. Here are some interesting blueprints for coinage during the Protectorate and the Restoration. They are both by Thomas Simon, who had been appointed chief engraver at the Royal Mint in 1649 under the mastership of Aaron Guerdon. First is a proposed design for coins in 1656:

AN327426001, © The Trustees of the British Museum

The Protectorate Council’s papers record the decision thus:

Approval of the stamp and superscriptions prepared by Thos. Simons for the gold and silver pieces, according to his new invention, as also the motto of Oliva. D. G. R. Pub. Ang. Sco. et Hib. Protec. on one side, and Pax quæritur bello, on the other side—and the 2 inscriptions for the edge, viz., Has nisi periturus mihi adimat nemo, and Protector literis, literœ nummis Corona et salus.

Here is an example of how the coins actually turned out:

After the restoration of Charles II, Simon squared regime change with his conscience. Although h seems to have lost his position as chief engraver, he carried on working at the mint, producing designs for the monarchy. Here is a warrant from Charles II for the production of an angel, with a strikingly different choice of iconography:

AN327431001, © The Trustees of the British Museum

In 1662, Simon lost a contest with Dutch engravers, the Roettier brothers, to design the first milled coinage. To try to restore his reputation, he submitted a design known as the Petition Crown to Charles II, with the following legend around the edge:

THOMAS SIMON MOST HUMBLY PRAYS YOUR MAJESTY TO COMPARE THIS HIS TRYALL PIECE WITH THE DUTCH AND IF MORE TRULY DRAWN & EMBOSSED, MORE GRACE FULLY ORDER’D, AND MORE ACCVRATELY ENGRAVEN, TO RELEIVE HIM

Here is Simon’s design for the piece:

AN327430001, © The Trustees of the British Museum

And here is how it turned out:

Initially yours

I’ve been reading Kevin Sharpe’s excellent Reading Revolutions, and came across a footnote drawing attention to a woodcut initial on an early proclamation by Charles II. Sharpe contrasts the imagery it uses with what had come before it during the Commonwealth:

It reminded me of another footnote about another royal proclamation, this one by Charles I, in John Adamson’s Noble Revolt. Most royal proclamations from 1640 to 1642 have plain, ornamental woodcuts, such as this ‘W’ typically used for ‘Whereas’.

However, A proclamation for the attendance of the members in both houses in Parliament used this woodcut initial:

It shows Hercules battling the many-headed hydra, something that becomes significant when you consider that the proclamation was issued on 12 December 1641 – just after the printing of the Grand Remonstrance (Parliament’s appeal to the people against Charles I), at a time when crowds were massed outside Westminster and a flurry of popular petitions were arriving at Parliament. To many political grandees, the danger of the many-headed monster would have foremost in their minds. Sir Edward Dering famously objected that ‘I did not dream that we should remonstrate downeward, tell stories to the people, and talke of the King as of a third person‘. Sir John Culpeper wrote in his diary that ‘this is a Remonstrance to the people. Remonstrances ought to be to the king for redress…. Wee [are] not sent to please the people’.

There are a few other examples of initials being paired appropriately with their content. Here is the woodcut from A proclamation prohibiting the payment and receipt of customes, and other maritime duties upon the late pretended ordinance of both Houses of Parliament:

There is also one which I lack sufficient knowledge of emblems to interpret – it appears to show a woman with two doves in her lap, and a man reclining in a tree – or a cloud? – above her. It was the initial for A proclamation for a generall fast thorowout this realme of England.

I think Sharpe and Adamson are undoubtedly right to point out how contemporaries would have created meaning from these woodcuts. They were part of the message itself as well as the medium through which it was delivered. Where it gets more fuzzy is in the intentions behind the creation of meaning. Not much seems to be known about the process of drawing up and printing proclamations. Who wrote them? Who agreed them? Who took them to the printers? How much scope did the printers have to choose the iconography – was it discussed between printer and author, or did the printer happen to alight on what they thought would be an appropriate woodcut? Was it just the nearest woodcut initial that happened to be at hand?

What is both fascinating and frustrating is the question of the extent to which the state might have deliberately used the typography and iconography – not just the text – of proclamations and other official printed documents to influence the reading public. Fascinating because it could tell us a lot about the use of print by the state during this period: and frustrating because we will probably never know the complete answer.

Great ideas that originated in the pub – part 96

I’m reading Tim Harris’s wonderful Restoration at the moment, and I just came across a lovely anecdote of some students in Edinburgh plotting to burn an effigy of the pope after a night down the pub.¹

There happened to be hanging up in the pub a copper plate showing an engraving of the pope being burned in effigy in London – part of the Whig demonstrations against popery and arbitrary government during the Exclusion Crisis. A plan was hatched: Edinburgh too would have its pope-burning. The students had a whip-round amongst friends and raised enough to hire a carver to make an effigy with:

Cloathes, Tripple Crown, Keys and other necessary habilments.²

Edinburgh University tried to prevent it taking place by offering the students a bond:

We the students of the University of Edinburgh considering the Dangerous Consequences might attend the burning of the Pope on Christmas-Day, do bind ourselves not to do it upon that Day, or any Day hereafter.³

Unsurprisingly, not many students signed up.

News of the plan spread, and soon others in the town got wind of it. They were met by soldiers stationed round the town in an attempt to prevent it, but it went ahead, the procession noisily shouting “no Pope, no Pope”. It was eventually stopped when it got to the High Street, at which point the ringleaders decided to blow up their effigy with gunpowder. Beats Rag Week hands down…

My image is taken from the broadside The Solemn Mock Procession of the Pope, Cardinalls, Jesuits, Fryers &c. through the City of London, November the 17th, 1679. It shows three lines of a Whig procession ending with the burning of the pope in effigy outside Temple Bar.

AN333648001
© The Trustees of the British Museum

1. Tim Harris, Restoration: Charles II and his Kingdoms, 1660-1685 (Allen Lane: 2005), pp. 187-189.
2. L.L., The History of the late proceedings of the students of the colledge at Edenborough (1681), Wing / 461:05.
3. Anonymous, The Scots demonstration of their abhorrence of popery with all its adherents (1681), Wing / S2025.