King Charles I, Numismatist.

 

Among the rulers of Britain , Charles I (1625-49) is as noted for his numismatic tastes as George V for his stamps. Charles formed one of the best collections of the time – but it was jinxed from start to finish.

The nucleus of the collection was begun by his elder brother, Henry, Prince of Wales, who purchased that of the scholar, Gorlaeus. Henry was an avid collector but died early (1612) without becoming king. Because their interests were so alike, Henry willed the collection to his younger brother, Charles (who would become Charles I). Reputedly, the collection of coins (mostly ancient) and medals amounted to 30,000 pieces at the time.

While Charles was very much a “hands on” collector, he also appointed a “Keeper of the Royal Library” in common with every other ruler who possessed “cabinets” of antiquities, paintings, coins, jewellery etc. Soon after Charles' accession to the throne, he appointed Abraham Vanderort to this post and it was his inventory of the coins and medals sections that form the above figure. As an avid collector, the collection must have been much larger by the time that Charles lost the civil war – and his head – to the Parliamentary “Roundhead” forces in 1649.

The King's collection at St. James's had been seized by Parliament in August, 1648 and committed to the trust of Hugh Peters for several months when he delivered the keys and custody to Major-General Ireton. Fearing these national treasures might be sold to foreigners and lost, Sir Bulstrode Whitelocke (where do the English get these names!?) had custody of them entrusted to the learned John Selden with John Drury, a German, as his deputy. Drury was later promoted to complete charge and remained until the Restoration in 1660. But his inventory, completed 27 April, 1652 , is disquieting: it shows only 12,000 pieces remained in the Library. In the words of a much later writer, it had been “impair'd and miserably imbezel'd” to a large degree.

Upon the restoration of the Stuarts in 1660, the new King Charles II appointed the antiquarian Elias Ashmole as Keeper (along with a great many other posts over the next number of years). Ashmole owned a considerable private museum in Oxford which later became the Ashmolean Museum . Subsequently, the Keeper's post was held by a “Monsieur Justel” and “Dr. Bentley” and while the collection was set in order and added to, no subsequent ruler was exactly passionate about it. On Tuesday, 4 th of January, 1698 (by the later new calendar), the Whitehall Palace was destroyed by fire and the entire collection lost.

 

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Silver Halfcrown, Charles I. Tower Mint, London . Typical example of such pieces produced by the hammer method for more than twenty years.

 

Silver Halfcrown, Charles I.   An example produced by Nicholas Briot with “roller press” machinery during the contest of 1631.

We might reasonably expect that since Charles I displayed this great interest in coins and art, his coinage might be better than it was. In many ways, he tried.

At the outset of his reign, all was strife in the Mint engraving department – partly because there were two “chief engravers” (or at least the job descriptions of two different posts were much the same). Edward Greene, promoted to chief- (from under-) engraver in 1624 was coupled with John Gilbert whose main claim to fame was that he managed to wreck the British silver coinage for the first month of Charles' reign. Within a week of his accession ( 2 April 1625 ), Charles added to the mix by appointing the medallist Abraham Vanderort “Provider of Patterns” (or “designer”). Unfortunately, his designs were too high to reproduce well on coins and he was shunted sideways to “Keeper of the King's Pictures”.

Dissatisfied with his effigy according to Greene's designs, Charles procured the services of Nicholas Briot, with a monopoly on the royal portraiture (either coin or medal) for an annual salary of £250. Briot was former engraver-general of the Paris Mint and combined with artist's brilliance great mechanical skill. It was this latter that caused him trouble in Paris : his advanced minting machinery was seen as a threat by the Parisian moneyers and great efforts (successful at the last) were made to rid themselves of him. His superior methods would cause him just as much trouble with the London moneyers, sinecured into positions of striking coins by hand.

 

Gold “Unite” (20s or 1 Pound piece) Charles I   An example of Briot's limited production of gold coinage during the 1630s.

 

Briot's machinery consisted of adjustable roller mills, punch presses and two types of mechanical coining press. Smaller coins, such as the silver 2d were struck in “sway presses”, what we now call “screw presses”. For them, blanks were punched as round pieces (and were sometimes also used by the hand-coiners). Larger denominations were not struck so much as rolled in German-type “roller presses” which in appearance and general action were much like the mangles on old washing machines. Because the rolling on of the design elongated both it and the blank on which it appeared, both the blanks and dies engraved on the rollers had to compensate by being somewhat “squashed” lengthwise, the amount of ovality calculated to result in a round finished coin. Therefore, Briot's larger punch presses were designed to produce oval blanks and, as such, useless to the hand-moneyers.

At first, the moneyers were successful in limiting Briot's work solely to medals but on 11 February 1629 it was extended to experimental coining. Even then, the moneyers managed to put off his work on the circulating coinage until 1631 when a contest was held. The illustrations above show a typical hand-hammered silver halfcrown from Charles' reign as well as a milled halfcrown by Briot from the 1631 contest.

Even though he obviously was turning out superior coinage, he scarcely swept the field. It was judged that while machinery was superior in large coinages, the greater complication in preparing dies allowed the old hand methods to shine with the small (and practically all were small at the time). Nevertheless, through the urgings of the King, Briot was allowed to coin a small fraction of the gold and silver coin until 1638; the rest continued as hand-struck.

Also in 1631, Briot was sent to the Edinburgh Mint to oversee the resumption of copper coinage and in the next year, struck Scotland 's first milled coinage in this metal, consisting of “turners” (2-penny) and penny pieces. However, resistance to the new methods was also rife here and the mintmaster, Thomas Acheson, condemned the new coinage as a failure, being too heavy. The King countered by allowing others to be struck deliberately underweight so as to bring them to a proper average.

 

Coronation Medal, 1633, by Briot Charles I – for Scotland .   Years after his English coronation, Charles was again crowned in Edinburgh , ignoring national sentiment by using Anglican rites. Struck in gold and silver presentation copies - as well as copper that were flung to the crowds.

 

Upon Acheson's death, Charles appointed Briot master and engraver of the Scottish mint, in addition to his English offices. This brought howls and repudiation on the grounds of his being both a non-resident and pluralist. Nevertheless, necessity permitted him to carry on with Scottish coinage until 1638 when he quitted the country and returned to England , first having married his daughter to a local, Sir John Falconer, and getting his son-in-law appointed to the master's post.

Briot returned to the Tower Mint and continued to strike a small fraction of the coinage, in the meantime inventing a sort of knurling tool to apply a rough version of graining on the edge, apparently the first time this was done. On 10 August, 1642 , Parliament seized the Tower Mint and Charles fled to the country, continuing to issue his coinage from a number of provincial mints – as did the Tower in his name. A pragmatist with no ingrained English loyalties, Briot flitted back and forth, although he secretly supplied dies to Charles and seems to have remained a “closet royalist”. In any case, he never had to definitely choose since he died in 1646.

Aside from the actual coinage, there are a number of high-quality patterns from his hand in Charles' name.

Because of the vicissitudes of the Civil War, the numismatist in Charles could still perhaps take some comfort today in the fact that in total his British series is by far the largest of any of her rulers in modern times. Types issued in his name range from neat machine-struck pieces, through the hammer-struck, all the way to crude pieces of silver plate, hand-stamped as obsidional pieces. To this day, the coinage of Charles I is by far the widest, most complicated for Great Britain .

Wayne Jacobs is a numismatic expert. Currently secretary and editor of the "Mid-Island Coin Club Numismatic Journal"of Nanaimo, Vancouver Island , British Columbia, he is the award winning author of numerous articles. The MICC journal are hosted here: MICC webpages Copyright 2006 Wayne Jacobs. This article may be reprinted freely for non commercial purpose only if the resource box is left intact, linking back to us.