Proclamation of Charles II, Issued 16 August 1672 Making Current the Royal Farthings and Halfpennys and Forbidding the Use of All Others By the King. A Proclamation for making currant His Majestie’s Farthings and Half-pence of Copper, and forbidding all others to be used. Charles R. Whereas of late years several Persons and Corporations, upon…
Proclamation of Charles II, issued 5th December 1674 Enjoining the Prosecution of Persons making or uttering farthings, half-pence, or pence of brass with private stamps By the King. A Proclamation enjoining the prosecution of all such persons as shall make or utter any farthings, half-pence, or pence of brass, or utter base metals with…
Although manufactured and used over 350 years ago, many of these tokens were issued with pretty much the same form of English as we use nowadays, with a few notable exceptions to their alphabet and spelling, e.g. The letter “U” is always represented by the letter “V”, e.g. DVBLIN There was no letter “J” in…
Dublin in the 1650’s Dublin City in the 1650’s was a very different place to that we all know and love today. It was a walled city – with heavily fortified gates at intervals along its perimeter. In 1649, with a Royalist army encamped in the grassy expanse surrounding Rathmines Castle, the Parliamentary commander of…
Introduction These pieces are nearly all rare, usually worn, and illustrations are hard to find – so, similar to my other Irish token guides, this is a “work in progress” and additional images will be added as and when I find them. They differ from the previous 17th C Tradesmens’ Farthings series insofar are they…
![17th century Irish tradesmens' tokens - Dublin, Lazey Hill, Nic[holas] Delone, Penny](https://oldcurrencyexchange.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/dublin-lazey-hill-nicholas-delone-penny.jpg?w=220&h=126&crop=1)
Although manufactured and used over 350 years ago, many of these tokens were issued with pretty much the same form of English as we use nowadays, with a few notable exceptions to their alphabet and spelling, e.g. The letter “U” is always represented by the letter “V”, e.g. DVBLIN There was no letter “J” in…
By the first half of the 17th C, the copper coinage in both Britain and Ireland was in complete disarray. Neither James I nor his son, Charles I, took much interest in providing small denominations and ‘farmed out’ the Royal prerogative of minting copper coins to ‘favourite’ courtiers as patentees – Lords Harington, Richmond, Lennox and Maltravers were the principal…
Background From medieval to early modern times, the value of a coin was based on its precious metal content – usually silver. With Ireland split into numerous petty kingdoms, the local ruler would have his own mint with a local moneyer to produce coinage. If a moneyer used less precious metal than was required so…
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