THE MARKS STAMPED UPON SILVER

I. THE HALL-MARK

This is the mark stamped upon gold or silver plate by a recognized guild, and signifies that the object so stamped has successfully passed the assay applied to it to determine its quality. British hall-marks possess a reputation which they undoubtedly deserve. “In this country the system has existed substantially in its present form since the reign of Edward I.”[1] In this reign, under statutory authority, it was laid down that all silver made in England was to be as good as the silver coin or better, and provincial silversmiths (one from each centre) were to proceed to London to have their work assayed and have the mark of the leopard’s head stamped upon it. For six centuries the hall-mark of the wardens of the “Mistery of Goldsmiths” of the city of London has stood as a guarantee of value, and is intended to afford sufficient protection to the purchaser.

This hall-mark, or town mark as it came to be known later, denotes the place where the assay was made. It was struck on all such articles as would bear the “Touch”; this is the technical term synonymous with assaying. As will be seen subsequently, the hall-mark does not stand alone. Very early it was deemed expedient to stamp some further mark, which should denote the date when the piece was actually assayed at the hall or assay office.

This second assay mark, or warden’s mark, is known as the date letter.

The Company of Goldsmiths in London, incorporated by charter in 1327, possessed plenary powers which they exercised with considerable rigour. They framed stringent regulations determining trade customs, they kept a watchful eye on recalcitrant members who showed any tendency to lower the dignity of the craft, and they punished with severity all those who counterfeited the official marks of the hall.

This dominance over the everyday transactions of the worker in plate was supported by a series of Acts of Parliament extending over a lengthy period. They are highly technical, and the study of hall-marks is of a complex nature, and adds no inconsiderable task to the hobby of collecting old silver. In the main it will be seen that the power at first exclusively conferred on the London Goldsmiths’ Company, and afterwards distributed to various assay offices in the United Kingdom, has been kept under due subjection by the Crown and by parliamentary legislation. There is no trade more protected by Acts of Parliament governing the details of its procedure. The fashioning of gold and silver plate being so intimately related to questions of currency and affecting the coin of the realm, it is not surprising to find that the tendency of legislation has been to relieve the old guilds of much of their former power. We find that one of the recommendations of the Select Committee of the House of Commons on hall-marking, in 1879, was that the whole of the assay offices should be placed under the supervision of the Royal Mint, in order that a uniform standard of quality should be guaranteed.

We have seen that the London assay office is the doyen of assay offices. At first, plate, although wrought elsewhere, had to bear the London hall-mark of the leopard’s head. Seven cities were appointed, by a statute of Henry VI in 1423, to exercise the right of assaying plate, viz. Salisbury and Bristol for the West Country, Newcastle and York for the North Country, Coventry for the Midlands, Lincoln and Norwich for East Anglia, and London, of course, continued its functions.

Eighteenth Century Assay Offices

At the beginning of the eighteenth century three out of these seven, Lincoln, Salisbury, and Coventry, had discontinued to assay silver, and it was not thought necessary to reappoint them. In 1700 York, Bristol, and Norwich were, in the reign of William III, reappointed for assaying and marking wrought silver. By the same Act, 12 William, cap. 4, two new assay offices were appointed, Exeter and Chester, and in the beginning of the following reign by 1 Anne, cap. 9, Newcastle was also reappointed. At the end of the eighteenth century, in 1773, two additional assay offices were created at Birmingham and at Sheffield by 13 George III, cap. 52. London, during all this time had continued to assay silver in unbroken continuity from the fourteenth century.

It has been estimated by those who have a large quantity of old silver plate passing through their hands, that, in spite of the number of provincial assay offices, over 90 per cent. of old English silver bears the London hall-mark.

The Hall-marks of the Various Assay Offices

In the Appendix (pp. 347-409) are illustrations showing the various hall-marks used at different periods by the wardens and assay masters of the appointed cities. The following indicate the chief marks used. London (the leopard’s head, sometimes like a king on a pack of cards, and later, when uncrowned, like a tiger’s head). Chester (an upright sword between three wheatsheaves). Newcastle, closed in 1884 (three castles set in a shield, two over one, similar in arrangement to the Chester wheatsheaves). Exeter, closed in 1883 (early mark letter X with crown above. After 1701 three castles, sometimes joined together as one castle with three towers, similar to Edinburgh mark). Norwich (castle above with lion beneath; the castle is less like a castle than any other of the castle marks). York, closed in 1856 (early mark a fleur-de-lis, showing only half, the other half undecipherable, conjectured by some authorities to be a rose, by others a leopard’s head; this latter is now accepted as correct, and clearly shows in some examples; later mark shield with cross of England and five lions). Birmingham (an anchor), Sheffield (a crown), Edinburgh (a castle with three towers). Glasgow (a tree with a bird perched on top, and a tiny bell suspended from boughs, a fish transversely across the trunk). Dublin (figure of Hibernia since 1730). Cork (ship and castle, two marks).

The Varying Number of Marks Used

It is an interesting fact, and extremely puzzling to beginners in the study of hall-marks, to find that the provincial offices used, in addition to their own place-mark, the leopard’s head of the London assay office. From 1697 to 1719 the leopard’s head disappears from all silver, for the reason which is given in detail in Section V of this chapter—“The Higher Standard Mark” (pp. 49-59). In its place two other marks occur—the lion’s head erased and the figure of Britannia. These were only used in London between the years 1697 and 1701, during which five years provincial offices ceased to assay any silver. This is a hiatus in provincial marks which the beginner should note. From 1701 to 1719 the provincial offices used their place-marks together with the two new marks (the lion’s head erased and the figure of Britannia), which were compulsory by law. This law was repealed in 1719 and London reverted to the old style mark of the leopard’s head, so that London-marked silver of 1720 is marked with the same number of marks as that before the Act of 1697, that is four marks. But it appears that the provinces for a long period did not revert to the old style of marking. Newcastle, for instance, adds the leopard’s head from 1720 in addition to her town mark; Exeter similarly took the leopard’s head in 1720. Chester also added another mark, the leopard’s head, at the same time.

The result of this is that before 1701 Chester had four marks, sometimes only three, but after 1720 five were used; when the duty mark was added (see p. 395) six marks were employed. The leopard’s head was not discontinued till 1839, reducing the marks to five, and now, since the abolition of the duty mark in 1890, there are only four. Exeter had, with the use of the leopard’s head, five marks, but in 1748 the leopard’s head had disappeared. Newcastle continued the leopard’s head during the period of the duty mark, thus making six marks, till the closing of the office in 1884.

II. THE STANDARD MARK

Throughout the history of the manufacture of English silver plate the standard maintained has been always equal to that of the silver coinage, and sometimes higher. The control of the standard has long been in the hands of the State, and, it has already been shown, the proving or assaying of all articles, in order that they may be officially stamped as of sterling silver, was allocated to the wardens and assay masters of the London and other assay offices. Obviously if it had been permitted to manufacture silver plate at a lower standard than the coin of the realm, the latter would have been melted down to be made into plate at a profit. In order to regulate the uniform procedure of the trade throughout the country the amount of alloy to be added to silver was very clearly laid down by law. The standard for silver has been in force for six hundred years, since the reign of Henry II, viz. 11 oz. 2 dwts. of silver and 18 dwts. alloy in every pound troy of plate; that is 925 parts of silver in every thousand parts. From the year 1697 to 1720 the standard was fixed at 11 oz. 10 dwts. of silver to the pound troy, that is ·958. This higher or “Britannia” standard is described in Section V of this chapter (pp. 49-59). In regard to this new standard, that is a standard above the sterling of the coin of the realm, special marks were used during the above period and have been used since then to the present day whenever silver plate is of the new standard. It was illegal to make silver plate of less than this new standard during the period 1697 to 1720; after this period there are two standards, the higher being optional.

Another period when silver plate was higher in standard than the silver coin of the realm was during a portion of the reigns of Henry VIII, the whole of the reign of Edward VI, and the whole of the reign of Mary, until Elizabeth in the second year of her reign elevated the debased coinage to its former standard of fineness. In 1543 Henry VIII reduced the standard from 11 oz. 2 dwts. to 10 oz.; that is, ten parts of silver to two parts of alloy. In 1545 he reduced it further to 6 oz. in the pound troy, that is half silver and half alloy. In 1546 he made a still further reduction to 4 oz., so that silver coins of that period contain only one third silver. In 1552 this was increased to 11 oz. 1 dwt., to be reduced to 11 oz. in Mary’s reign. During all these changes the silver plate remained true to its old standard, and as though in proud superiority over the coin of the realm, the London Goldsmiths adopted in 1545 as a standard mark a new stamp—the lion passant, which has been their standard mark from that day to the present time, and has been recognized by many statutes since that time as constituting the standard mark, or sterling mark of the State, or, as it was termed at the time of Queen Elizabeth, “Her Majesty’s Lion.”

On two occasions, therefore, the silver plate of this country was of finer quality than the coin of the realm: on the first when the coin of the realm was debased, and on the second when silver plate was compulsorily raised to a higher standard than the coin of the realm.

The lion passant, which is the standard mark, has naturally been employed by provincial offices as a guarantee of sterling or standard silver. During the period 1697 to 1720 the lion passant disappears from all silver in the “Britannia” standard period when other marks were substituted. But in 1720 the lion passant mark occurs again on all London silver, and in Chester, Exeter, York, and Newcastle marks. From 1773 both Sheffield and Birmingham have used the mark of the lion passant. In regard to Scotland, the standard mark for Edinburgh, after 1757, is a thistle, and for Glasgow a lion rampant after 1819. The Irish standard mark is a harp crowned from the year 1638, which mark is on all Irish silver assayed at the Dublin office. From 1730 the figure of Hibernia has been the duty mark and the harp crowned the standard mark on all Irish silver assayed at Dublin. These marks are shown in Appendix (pp. 347-409).

III. THE DATE MARK

Among the various marks used for the purposes we have indicated, the date mark is one which has a vital significance. It establishes with certainty the year in which a piece of silver was fashioned and taken to the assay office to be stamped as sterling silver. The easiest plan in regard to date marks would have been to stamp the actual date upon each piece of silver or gold assayed, but this was too simple a procedure for the “Mistery of the Goldsmiths.” They employed alphabets of various styles and each year was represented by a different letter, and to add further to the puzzling difficulty of deciphering these symbols, certain letters were omitted. Moreover, each assay town has its own series of date marks. Letters of the alphabet are used sometimes from A to T, or A to U, or from A to Z; sometimes the letters J and V are omitted, and in one case for a considerable period the letters of the alphabet were used indiscriminately. Various kinds of type were used and they appear in shields of differing shapes. The study therefore of the date marks of the London assay office and of the various provincial assay offices together with the date marks used in Scotland and in Ireland is very intricate, and the determination of these with exactitude might occupy a man the greater portion of his life. The standard work on the subject is “English Goldsmiths and their Marks,” by Mr. C. J. Jackson, which contains over eleven thousand marks reproduced in facsimile. Mr. Jackson in the 1905 edition had worked for seventeen years at this subject, and his labours have been stupendous; a new edition shortly to appear will represent a quarter of a century’s work. There is no other book on the subject within measurable distance of this encyclopaedia.

It is obvious that in the present volume only a limited number of marks can be illustrated, but the author has given typical examples covering the London marks, which are the most important, and a few examples from most of the provincial assay offices as well as from Scotland and Ireland. These will be found in the Appendix (pp. 347-409).

London

The Goldsmiths’ Company of London has an honourable and ancient history and must be regarded as the leading spirit in regard to hall-marks. It is admitted that, from a public point of view, the hall-marks stamped on silver by the various assay offices have a very definite meaning. “Our hall-marks afford a guarantee of value to which, it is not to be wondered at, considerable importance attaches, since these goods may safely be regarded as an investment.” The true function of the Goldsmiths’ Company is a protective one—protective in the interests of honest traders, protective in the interests of public buyers. We suggest that they might perform an educational service by throwing open their assay office to public inspection. Neither the Royal Mint nor the Bank of England may be said to be an inaccessible holy of holies. The assaying of silver and gold is a process which affects the pocket of the public to a large extent.

As custodians of historic archives of no insignificant value, there is no reason why such records should not be as readily accessible to the general student as are the papers in the Public Record Office which divulge bygone State secrets. Possibly if the assaying were placed under Government supervision, as has so often been strongly advocated, these things might come to pass.

In regard to data undoubtedly the Goldsmiths’ Company can claim an ancient record. They are proudly jealous of their reputation and rightly anxious to guard the public interest. There is no doubt that “the laws of hall-marking, scattered as they are over a multitude of statutes, are highly technical, and not the least necessary reform is their consolidation.” The Goldsmiths’ Company was once a trade guild, but this is the twentieth century, and they exist solely in the public interest. To-morrow they could be swept aside by an Act of Parliament, and all silver could be assayed and stamped at the Royal Mint or by Government assayers.

In regard to the date letters the London Assay Office has consistently, with one exception, 1696, adhered to twenty letters in each alphabet, that is from A to U (omitting J). But the provincial offices were wofully erratic and exhibit a looseness and want of system in not adhering to the same arrangement of alphabets in succeeding periods. It is not necessary to follow these eccentricities in detail, a few examples will suffice. Newcastle from 1702 to 1720 employed the alphabet as follows:—A (1702), B (1703), D (1705), F (1707), M (1712), O (1716), P (1717), Q (1718), D (1719), E (1720). Some of these were used for more than one year. In the next two periods, 1721 to 1739 and 1740 to 1758, the alphabet ends at T. Later alphabets run to Z. Chester employed an alphabet sometimes ending in X, sometimes in V, and sometimes in U, and one series runs from A to Z (excluding J) from 1839 to 1863.

The result of the somewhat chaotic alphabet marks has been to focus the attention of the collector too much on this particular side of the subject. The identification of marks, the outward symbols of time and place, have reduced the study of old silver to a somewhat lower plane than it should occupy by right. It is proper that such determining factors should have their place, but not the first place. There was a time when china collectors ignored paste and glaze and laid particular stress on marks, and it is a very happy accident that a great portion of English porcelain and much of English earthenware is unmarked. It has eventually led collectors to think for themselves and know something more of the technique and to learn to appreciate the artistic value of specimens of the potter’s art coming under their hand.

The collector of old silver, however, cannot hope to escape from marks; they are an integral part of the subject, and coming as they do under the strict surveillance of the law, they offer protection to his investment and have the comforting assurance of gilt-edged security. There is nothing of the subtle speculation as to exact period which accompanies the acquisition of old furniture, nor is there the same element of chance which governs the operations of the picture collector. The hall-mark, the standard mark, the date mark, and the maker’s mark stamped with mechanical precision proclaim “with damnable iteration” the string of unalterable facts.

In regard to marks it is interesting to read what Mr. Octavius Morgan, the pioneer of the study of hall-marks, says in 1852: “Every person who is possessed of an article of gold or silver plate has most probably observed a small group of marks stamped on some part of it. Few however have, I believe, regarded them in any other light than as a proof that the article so marked is made of the metal which it professes to be, and that the metal itself is of a certain purity. And this is in fact the real ultimate object and intention of these marks; but besides this the archaeologist can deduce from them other important and interesting information, as by them he can learn the precise year in which any article bearing these marks was made. It is therefore to these marks that I am about to direct attention with a view to elucidate their history and peculiar meaning.” To Mr. Morgan’s labours in an unknown field all subsequent writers on hall-marks are indebted. He was the first collector who realized their importance. It seems amazing that up to 1852 nothing appears to have been known to the intelligent layman or the public at large of these symbols which had appeared on plate for some six hundred years. It suggests the idea that the marking was regarded in the nature of a trade secret. The “mistery” of the Goldsmiths’ Company was not to be profaned by vulgar eyes. In the light of this it may be conjectured that the chaotic arrangement of alphabets came about not by accident but by design.

(See Chronological List of Specimens illustrated in this volume, p. 414.)

IV. THE MAKER’S MARK

This of all the marks should be the most intimate and should indicate the personal touch, as something coming from the craftsman to the possessor. It is the heirloom which the old silversmith hands to posterity. His mark signified his pride in his art, that is in the days when craftsmen were artists and whatsoever their hand found to do they did it with all their might. But the maker’s mark, set on it first by his punch when he duly sent his apprentice to the assay office to have it assayed and marked by the great functionaries of his guild, has become eclipsed beside the imposing array of symbols stamped upon it at the Goldsmiths’ Hall. That the piece exists and was brought into being by the humble silversmith is of lesser importance than the row of legally environed escutcheons signifying so much with such unerring veracity: that it was assayed and found of standard quality, so down comes the stamp of the lion passant; that the year was so and so anno domini, down comes the stamp of the secret date letter, so carefully guarded from the public; that the duty was paid, and not till then, another stamp, this time with the king’s head; and last but not least, down comes the stamp of the leopard’s head, denoting that all this was done under the surveillance of the Mistery of Goldsmiths of London. Hence the collector, who comes a century or two after these great happenings, by capricious fate casts his lens on the signs manual of standard, and proofs of place and date; but the bare initials of the maker, which came first from the furnace to the assay office, now come last, as insignificant letters merely denoting that the specimen happened to have been made at all.

What would one give for a few human touches in connexion with our old silver! We may imagine that our candlesticks of the year 1750 held the flickering wax candles which were guttering when the dawn broke when our great-great-grandfather lost his fortune at cards in the county of —, or maybe it was somebody else’s grandfather. But this is in the realms of fancy, and the fortune is literally fabulous. Why are there no George Morlands in the silversmith’s craft? Cannot the guilds dig out their romantic history from their archives? Just to think that our designer of candelabra and flagons ran a fine career on Hounslow Heath with gamesters and fighting men; or did he, just that once, have a duel with young Lord What’s-his-Name in the Guards, and pinked him? Did not the story get to White’s and to the Cocoa Tree Clubs, how the tradesman scored! But no such thing. All these initials of makers are empty of such vanities. We can do better with prints. Those who possess the engraved work of Ryland have the satisfaction of knowing that he was hounded by Bow Street runners and hid, like the modern Lefroy, at Stepney, and that he was hanged for forgery.

There is William Blake, who dreamed as great dreams as Joseph of old, who gave imaginary sittings to Pontius Pilate, who wrote wonderful poetry, and who died in a garret. Copper-plates were dear, but he had no poverty of invention, and since the days when as a child he saw angels following the reapers in the corn, he lived for posterity and left his record. But have gravers on silver and inventors of symmetrical goblets of gold less blood than those who drew lines on copper? There is something human missing in these strings of initials and bare names so sedulously gathered together by dry-as-dust compilers.

In furniture, makers’ names have become household words. Chippendale, Sheraton, Hepplewhite have created styles of their own. Of Sheraton we have personal details piquant enough to add fresh lustre to his satinwood creations. There is the story of the one teacup in the back street of Soho, which was handed to his Scottish apprentice in the little shop whence he issued his religious pamphlets.

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.”

In 1739 the initials were by law altered from the first two letters of the surname to the first letter of the surname and the first letter of the Christian name. In earlier years the maker had a device—a dolphin, a star, a cross, or any other symbol to denote his individual work. Nowadays anonymity is further safeguarded by the Goldsmiths’ Company of London, who admit names of firms. Their printed form runs: “Statement to be made in writing by Manufacturers, Dealers and others, bringing or sending Gold or Silver Plate to be Assayed and Hall-Marked.” Presumably in the old days prentice work passed as that of the master. But the prentice grew older and was allowed to come out into the light. But X & Co., Y & Co., Z & Co. may send their stamps round to smaller and more original men to impress on their work. The public, caring more for the lion, et cetera, than for X, Y, and Z, know no better; as for the real makers the public know nought. But we ask, is this the way to encourage our workers in plate? Syndicates have no bowels of compassion, but assay offices might be supposed to minister to the interests of the art of the worker in precious metals. To kill or to stifle individuality is a crime against Art. If Sheraton had been a silversmith his name would have been unknown.

By law it has been determined that the initials of the maker shall appear on each article of silver assayed; there is nothing in any statute concerning the middle man. It would be interesting to know what steps the various assay offices take to ascertain that the actual maker’s name is upon the pieces to which they affix their official symbols.

To go back to the fourteenth century: there is a fine touch of human nature recorded of one member of the goldsmiths’ guild of London who was found guilty of mals outrages in connexion with his work. He was fined a pipe of wine, and twelve pence a week for one year to a poor member of the company.

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:

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.

On the look-out for links connecting the silversmith with things human we find an interesting shop card of Ellis Gamble, to whom by his own desire young Hogarth was apprenticed and learned to engrave on silver plate. It may be imagined that he was not an “Idle Apprentice,” and his early work with the graver on the flagons and tankards in Mr. Gamble’s shop should stimulate research. It was here that he drew heraldic beasts. His apprenticeship terminated when he was twenty years of age. There is preserved in Hogarth Illustrated (by Ireland) the engraving of the Kendal Arms during his apprenticeship, showing fine design.

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.
• • The Hermitage (Wapping)
    John Mayhew. Gouldsmith His Halfepeny
    Neare the Armitage Bridg. I.M 1666
  • West Smithfeild
    Euodias Inman. his halfe Peny
    In Smithfeild Rounds. Gouldsmith.
  • Beech Lane (Barbican) (on a farthing).
    Elizabeth Wood (with the Goldsmiths’ arms)
    In Beach Lane. 1656. E. W.
  • Seacole Lane (Snow Hill) (on a farthing).
    Samuell Chapell in Seacole Lane, 1671.
    The Goldsmiths’ arms on reverse.
• Exeter (on a farthing).
• • Samuell Calle (with design of a man smoking)
    Gouldsmith in Exon (with design of covered cup).
• Bath (on a farthing).
• • Geo. Reve. Goldsmith (with Goldsmiths’ arms)
    In Bath. 1658. G. M. R.
• Oxford (on a farthing).
• • Will Robinson 1668 (with Goldsmiths’ arms)
    Gouldsmith in Oxon W. M. R.
• Dover (on a farthing).
• • Willian Keylocke (with the Goldsmiths’ arms)
    In Dover. 1667. W M K
• Ireland.
• • Dublin (on a penny).
    Io. Partington. Gouldsme. (Arms: on a bend cotise, an eagle).
    Kinges head. Skinner Row, Dublin, 1d.
• Kilkenny (on a penny).
• • William Keovgh 1d.
    Kilkeny. Goldsmith (with design of a mermaid).

Among the eighteenth century American silversmiths there are some that stand out prominently, and the exhibition of old American plate held at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 1906 brought them to notice. There is the work of John Dixwell from 1680 to 1735 who was the son of Colonel John Dixwell, one of the regicides who fled to America in the early years of the Restoration. But the historic punch bowl made by Paul Revere was the piÈce de rÉsistance, and was shown together with some forty other of his creations. It was made for the fifteen “Sons of Liberty.” The inscription runs: “To the memory of the glorious Ninety-Two members of the Honourable House of Representatives of the Massachusetts Bay, who, undaunted by the insolent menaces of villains in power, from a strict regard to conscience and the Liberties of their constituents, on the 30th June, 1768, Voted Not To Rescind.”

But Paul Revere, silversmith, has another claim to renown as a patriot. Longfellow, in his Tales of a Wayside Inn, has a poem telling of “Paul Revere’s Ride,” seven years after he fashioned this punch bowl. The story runs that he waited, booted and spurred, on the Charlestown shore for secret news to carry through all the countryside.

We know the story of the opening shots at Lexington, the obstinate foolishness of the North Ministry and the deaf ear George III turned to the wisdom of Chatham. Longfellow pays posterity’s tribute to the silversmith:—

V. THE HIGHER STANDARD MARK

The higher standard mark has a significance peculiarly its own. By 8 and 9 William III, cap. 8, it was enacted that any person bringing silver plate from January 1696 to November 1697[2] to any of the Royal Mints, which silver plate be marked as sterling silver with the mark usually employed at the Hall of the Goldsmiths’ Company of London should receive “without tarrying till it be melted and assayed,” five shillings and four pence per ounce.

Section 9 of this chapter of the Act contains in official terms an allusion to the grave scandals that had shaken the commercial stability of the country for many years. “And whereas it might reasonably be suspected that part of the silver coins of the realm had been, by persons regarding their own private gain more than the public good, molten and converted into vessels of silver or other manufactured plate, which crime has been the more easily perpetrated by them, inasmuch as the goldsmiths or other workers of plate by the former laws and statutes of the realm were not obliged to make their plate of finer silver than the sterling or standard ordained for the monies of the realm,” it was enacted that from and after 25th March 1697 no silver plate should be made that was not of higher standard than the coin of the realm. It was laid down that the legal marks on all silver were to be the maker’s mark, expressed by the two first letters of his surname, and that the marks of the assay offices should be for this new plate the lion’s head erased and “the figure of a woman commonly called Britannia” in lieu of the former marks of the leopard’s head and the lion passant. In addition to this the date mark was to be stamped to show in what year the plate was made. In this Act of 1696 it will be observed that the mention of the leopard’s head and the lion passant include London marks only. As the manufacture of silver plate of the old standard was illegal after the passing of this Act and the use of the old marks was equally illegal, it would appear that the provincial assay offices were precluded from stamping silver.

That this appears to be the case is suggested by the reappointment of the provincial offices in 1700. York, Exeter, Bristol, Chester, and Norwich, at which cities mints had been opened for the coinage of the new silver, were reappointed by 12 William, cap. 4, to assay and mark silver plate as heretofore. The new standard was to be observed. The marks to be employed were the maker’s mark, the lion’s head erased, the figure of Britannia, the city mark, and the date letter, “a variable Roman letter,” which latter provision was not then, and has not since, been observed, as other types have been used.

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:—

1. Assayed in London between 1697 and 1700, when London was the only office assaying silver plate. (It was illegal in England to make silver plate of a lower standard between 1697 and 1720.)

2. Assayed in London between 1701 and 1720.

3. Assayed at Chester, Exeter, York, and Norwich, between 1701 and 1720.

4. Assayed at Newcastle from 1702 to 1720.

5. Assayed at any of the assay offices (except Dublin; no Higher Standard silver being made in Ireland) after 1720 to the present day. Although such silver plate of the Higher Standard has not since been compulsory by law since 1720.

The Britannia period is an intricate period in the study of silver plate, but the history underlying the Acts which governed the hall-marking at this period should appeal to the collector who wishes to endow his plate with historic interest. Without digressing too widely into economic questions which threatened to paralyse commerce and to destroy the allegiance to William III, it is of essential interest to the collector of old silver plate to realize the conditions which rendered the Higher Standard Mark of the Britannia and the lion’s head erased necessary to prevent financial disasters of considerable magnitude. The plate closet provides the historian with many of his facts. It was in the days of Charles I that the loyalists melted down their plate to be converted into coin of the realm. It was in William’s day that clippers of coins provided silver for the silversmith to fashion into his pleasing shapes. At what cost will be shown.

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.

Coiners grew and multiplied because the damaged and defaced coins could be more easily imitated. Hundreds of wretched persons were dragged up Holborn Hill, and in spite of flogging, branding, and hanging, the trade of the coin clipper was easier than highway robbery, and as fortunes were to be made those who followed that avocation took the risks, as did smugglers. It was a dangerous occupation. Seven men were hanged one morning and a woman branded, but this did not deter the hundreds who were undetected. One clipper who was caught offered £6,000 for a pardon, which was rejected, but the news gave a stimulus to the industry. The Government of the day became alarmed at the state of things, which grew from bad to worse. A sum of £57,200 of hammered money paid into the Exchequer was tested by the officials. It should have weighed above 220,000 ounces; it weighed under 114,000 ounces. (Lowndes’ Essay for the Amendment of the Silver Coins, 1695.) A Quaker who came from the North journeyed southwards, and his diary shows that as he travelled towards London the innkeepers were astonished at the full and heavy weight of the half-crowns he offered. They asked where such money could be found. The guinea which he purchased at Lancaster for twenty-two shillings bore a different value at every stage. In London it was worth thirty shillings, and would have been worth more had not the Government fixed this as the highest at which gold should be received in payment of taxes. The Memoirs of this Quaker were published in the Manchester Guardian some thirty years ago.

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.

The Government still believed in penalties, and hoped that drastic punishment would stop the clipping of the hammered coin and the melting and export of the new milled coin. A clipper who informed against two other clippers was pardoned. Any one informing against a clipper had a reward of forty pounds. Whoever was found in the possession of silver clippings, filings, or parings should be burned in the cheek with a red-hot iron. Officers were empowered to search for bullion, and the onus of proof as to its origin was thrown on the possessors, or failing this they were fined heavily. But all in vain were these drastic measures; clipping still continued in defiance of all penal laws. Colley Cibber in his Love’s Last Shift, or the Fool in Fashion, has a hit at the debased state of the coinage. A gay cynic says, “Virtue is as much debased as our money: and, in faith, Dei Gratia is as hard to be found in a girl of sixteen as round the brim of an old shilling.”

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.”

Happily Lowndes was completely refuted by Locke in his Further Considerations Concerning the Raising the Value of Money, 1695.

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 (L’Hermitage, January 14-24, 1696).

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” (Evelyn’s Diary, May 13th). “Want of current money for smallest concerns even for daily provisions in the markets.” (June 11th, Evelyn’s Diary.)

By about August 1696, signs of prosperity began to be observed after a very trying time owing to the scarcity of silver.

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. (See the “Duty Mark,” p. 61.)

VI. THE DUTY MARK

In regard to duty on silver plate, it was first imposed in England and in Scotland in 1719, when the old silver standard was revived. The duty was fixed at 6d. per ounce. Later by 3 Geo. II, in 1730, the duty was imposed on silver plate assayed in Ireland, and at this date the figure of Hibernia was used to denote that duty had been paid to the king. In 1784, by 24 Geo. III, cap. 53, a duty of 6d. per ounce was levied. This applied to England and Scotland, and it was enacted that, in addition to the other marks formerly employed by the makers and assay offices, the new mark of the king’s head should be stamped on every piece of silver plate on which duty has been paid. By another section of this Act it was a felony punishable by death to use any counterfeit stamp contrary to law. By a later Act, 55 Geo. III, in 1815, the counterfeiting the king’s head duty mark was punishable by death; and this was only a hundred years ago. The duty on silver plate was now 1s. 6d. per ounce.

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.

In regard to the duty mark on Irish plate, it was not until 1807 by 47 Geo. III that the stamp of the king’s head, or that of the reigning sovereign was added to the other marks to denote that duty had been paid to the king. The old mark of Hibernia was allowed to remain; originally it was a duty mark, but it may be now regarded as the hall-mark of Dublin.

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

In connexion with these duty marks the Act of 1784 has a section which has an interesting provision, and those collectors who may happen to find a figure of Britannia on a piece of silver without its companion mark of the lion’s head erased may be puzzled as to the reason of the omission. First it does not denote that the silver plate was of the higher standard. It was a mark stamped on silver which was exported. By the above Act duty was not charged on silver exported, and in order to prevent any of this plate being taken abroad for a short time only, and then landed in this country to be sold here without the duty having been paid, it was stamped with the figure of Britannia.

The following are the Duty Marks used:—

The illustrations of these duty marks are shown in the Table (p. 357).

VII. THE FOREIGN MARK

The Foreign Mark is a protective measure. A great amount of foreign wrought plate had found its way into this country and was being sold by dealers without sending it to the assay office. It was of a lower standard than would have been passed by the assay offices, that is to say it was not sterling silver as understood in this country, viz. 925 parts silver in every thousand parts of metal—that is, admitting only 75 parts of alloy in every thousand. In 1842 an Act was passed, 5 and 6 Vic., which enacted that no silver plate which had not been wrought in England, Scotland, or Ireland was to be sold in these countries unless it had first been assayed in the same manner as silver wrought in Great Britain and Ireland. But no provision was made that such foreign silver should bear an additional stamp, nor does it seem that the Act was very much put into operation. The provisions seem to have been evaded till 1867, when by 30 and 31 Vic. all imported plate had to be marked with letter F in an oval escutcheon, denoting it was of foreign manufacture, although it had passed the tests and otherwise had the stamps of British or Irish assay offices upon it.

This is not very satisfactory, although the practice has now been altered. A purchaser gets a piece of silver plate with the lion and the leopard’s head on it, and this to the tyro denotes quality, and allays any fears he may have as to its origin. He may innocently imagine he is supporting home industries, not knowing what the meaning of the letter F may be at the end of the row of symbols.

This foreign mark, illustrated in Table, p. 357, was used from 1876 to 1904.

It seems unfair to British manufacturers that foreign silver is assayed here for competitive sale with home manufactured plate; it bears the time-honoured symbols that have been used in this country for four hundred years. There is also the possibility that some fraudulent dealer may remove the F, and straightway the piece becomes British. It was not in the public interest that such a loose state of things should continue.

By the Hall Marking of Foreign Plate Act (4 Edw. VII. c. 6), Foreign silver plate was marked by the Assay Offices with the following marks in addition to the Standard Mark and the Date Letters. In 1906, by Order in Council, certain alterations were made in the London, Sheffield, Glasgow and Dublin marks on Foreign plate assayed.