Comments on Anglo-Irish Post-Mediaeval Pre-Commonwealth Coinage

[brandm24]

The thread these posts refer to is here.

I've read through this thread several times and did so again just recently because I added a halfpenny to my collection. It's very corroded but I believe it matches the example in Post 43. I would appreciate if you could confirm that or if you think it's something different.

I don't have a weight but the size is about 25mm. I bought it from a large Australian auction house that attributed it as an S-6555. I don't know where that reference comes from.

Any comments would be appreciated. Many thanks.

Bruce

[Deeman]

I've read through this thread several times and did so again just recently because I added a halfpenny to my collection. It's very corroded but I believe it matches the example in Post 43. I would appreciate if you could confirm that or if you think it's something different.

I don't have a weight but the size is about 25mm. I bought it from a large Australian auction house that attributed it as an S-6555. I don't know where that reference comes from.

Any comments would be appreciated. Many thanks.

Bruce

Looks like the farthing (S-6556), weight around 2.2g, rather than the halfpenny (S-6555) that is referenced. But the harp strings should traverse from the top left to right, not right to left.
There are many contemporary forgeries of these two coins.

The 'S' is a Spink code.

[Figleaf]

It is probably quite safe to say that Bruce's coin was inspired by the coins indicated, but I see many other differences on both sides, including the shading at the bottom of the crown and the sceptres pointing at the wrong part of the crown (top part of the cross) half way.

The problem is that the Kilkenny coppers were probably produced in haste and with little if any quality supervision while there must have been a need for quite a few dies if the minters didn't know how to harden them. It may be quite hard to distinguish variants and fakes, though the light weight is a bad omen...

Peter

[brandm24]

That's why I posted the coin here. It's similar in many ways to the example in Post# 43 but there are a lot of differences as you say, Peter. As a matter of fact I wasn't convinced that it was a Kilkenny halfpenny at all.

There's some speculation from old researchers (Bishop Nicholson 1724 / Leake 1726) that shillings and sixpences were also struck, but according to James O'Brien on his website Old Currency Exchange, none seem to have survived--- if they were struck at all. I thought my example might possibly be one or the other but of course I have nothing to compare it to.

Maybe it's a farthing or a contemporary forgery as Deeman points out or just a variety. Thanks for your comments, guys.

Bruce

[Figleaf]

Soldiers may be brave some of the time, but that doesn't mean they are foolish all of the time. If you promise them silver and pay them with copper, they will become very unhappy very quickly and they are armed.

Ireland was a poor country to begin with. War had been going on for some time, using uo people's silverware in no time. I think it is quite unlikely that there was enough silver in all of Kilkenny to pay the soldiers. That raises the question of what did make them keep going, of course. The first suspect is paper promises.

Peter

[brandm24]

Only the larger denominations were silver...crowns and half crowns. All smaller denominations were copper so maybe that was enough for the soldiers. Or maybe it was just promises similar to those made about the Irish gunmoney 150 years later. We all know how that ended.

Bruce

[FosseWay]

The gunmoney was less than 50 years later. Soldiers who received James's gunmoney in 1689 may well have had grandfathers still alive who remembered receiving something similar during the wars of the 1640s!