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A strange Shilling 1645 Carlisle

Just uploaded a Carlisle 1/- , I remark it as a coin with a difference.

There is information but I do not have it to the amount of Silver collected for coining from the Royalists, this is different as I understand that coinage could not be made with the hallmarks being shown.

I would be interested to get information of others with hall-marks, and the amount of silver collected and what coinage was made


see the home page
http://www.petitioncrown.com/



SwK
image
A collection uploaded on www.petitioncrown.com is a fifty- year love affair with beautiful British coins, medals and Roman brass

Comments

  • RobPRobP Posts: 483 ✭✭


    << <i>Just uploaded a Carlisle 1/- , I remark it as a coin with a difference.

    There is information but I do not have it to the amount of Silver collected for coining from the Royalists, this is different as I understand that coinage could not be made with the hallmarks being shown.

    I would be interested to get information of others with hall-marks, and the amount of silver collected and what coinage was made


    see the home page
    http://www.petitioncrown.com/



    SwK
    image >>



    The info is a bit elusive. Philip Nelson's Obsidional Money of the Great Rebellion (1905, reprinted 1976) gives the following. All available information is due to somebody called Tullie whose Narrative of the Siege of Carlisle still exists.

    The quantity of plate obtained for coining amounted to 1162 oz. which at 5/- per oz. is equivalent to £280/11/10d1-2d. 86 oz. were lost in refining the silver. The coins were struck at 6/- to the oz resulting in £323 worth of coins, the equivalent of 6460 shillings. Nelson suggests that this was probably divided into 1000 3/- pieces and 3460 1/-s. The coins were issued on 30/5/1645 and so circulated for about a month.

    I can't think why coins should not be permitted with the hallmark showing as this would be counter intuitive. The presence of a hallmark from touched plate would lend credibility to the fineness of the silver, though by definition the number of pieces must be minimal when you consider the area of a hall mark in relation to the area of a coin and the original plate from whence the silver was procured. I don't have any images of hallmarked obsidional coinage to share. Sorry.
  • MrEurekaMrEureka Posts: 23,892 ✭✭✭✭✭
    I can't think why coins should not be permitted with the hallmark showing as this would be counter intuitive. The presence of a hallmark from touched plate would lend credibility to the fineness of the silver

    Perhaps they feared that if some pieces showed hallmarks, those that didn't would be rejected.
    Andy Lustig

    Doggedly collecting coins of the Central American Republic.

    Visit the Society of US Pattern Collectors at USPatterns.com.
  • RobPRobP Posts: 483 ✭✭


    << <i> I can't think why coins should not be permitted with the hallmark showing as this would be counter intuitive. The presence of a hallmark from touched plate would lend credibility to the fineness of the silver

    Perhaps they feared that if some pieces showed hallmarks, those that didn't would be rejected. >>



    I don't think so. I can see the reasoning behind not putting hallmarks on national currency because of the additional time spent assaying the alloy and then stamping the hallmark. To have hallmarked coinage would render the pyx trial irrelevant as this is a post-production check to ensure the fineness of metal used and took place months or even years after the event. Assaying every mix prior to striking the coins would be required if the hallmark was used. This would be time consuming and prohibitively costly. In the case of obsidional coinage though, the locals supplied the plate, so knew where it came from and I suspect that with Parliamentary forces surrounding and attacking the town, silver purity wasn't the foremost thing in the minds of the inhabitants.
  • HussuloHussulo Posts: 2,953 ✭✭✭
    What process did they use for refining the silver? if it was melted surely the hallmarks would be lost anyway?
  • RobPRobP Posts: 483 ✭✭


    << <i>What process did they use for refining the silver? if it was melted surely the hallmarks would be lost anyway? >>



    If it was silver plate and the town was under siege then it was cut up into pieces of approximately the correct weight. If it was silver that wasn't vaguely flat, then they had to melt it and form it into blanks. When the bullion was called in, the hallmarked (touched) plate was effectively already refined and so could be used as was. Untouched plate required an assay before the silver could be used. It has been proposed that silver which wasn't fine enough could be augmented with foreign coinage of a higher fineness in addition to refining the original material. I have heard ducatoons were a possibility, but haven't found any references to date which show that the .940 used in the 1700's was also used in the 1600's where the figures I have seen quoted are 0.920 fine. As a rule, they tried to maintain the fineness, but at the provincial mints this standard fell at times. Besly & Cowell co-wrote a paper on Civil War coinage metrology in the 1991 BNJ.
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