Cliché reverse for a touchpiece of Charles II by Thomas Simon / [Helen Farquhar].

  • Farquhar, Helen
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Cliché reverse for a touchpiece of Charles II by Thomas Simon / [Helen Farquhar]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    nearly 90,800 persons resorted to this cure during his reign, and no less than 24,000? in the first four years. It is therefore not surprising that the costly angel should have been supplanted by a simpler and smaller design, and that the die, though made by Simon, should have been rejected, as it was not needed for currency. That Simon was in the habit of striking these proofs in thin silver foil is evidenced by two other patterns in my collection of a broad and half-crown respectively of the first issue. They are much more carefully struck than the current coin, and exemplify the statement of Pepys that Simon’s dies were better executed than the hammered coimage would lead us to suppose. He writes, in his Diary of February 18, 1660-61: “ We staid, walking in the gallery, where we met with Mr. Slingsby, who showed me the stamps of the King’s new coyne, which is strange to see how good they are in the stamp and bad in the money, for lack of skill to make them.” We notice that in the list* drawn up by Simon of the “fourteen several original stamps by way of the Hammer,” to which the above half-crown and the broad also belong, the “angel-piece”’ is included, the total charge amount- ing to £280. 3 Num. Chron., New Series, Vol. XII. p. 192. * Vertue’s Medals and Coins of Thomas Simon, ed. 1780, App. V. p. 89.
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