Sovereign Rarities Ltd
Auction 2 24 Sep 2019
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Highly Desirable Portrait Oliver Cromwell Gold Twenty Shilling Broad Dated 1656Oliver Cromwell (d.1658), gold Broad of Twenty Shillings, 1656, engraved by Thomas Simon, laureate head left, legend and toothed border surrounding, OLIVAR. D. G. R.P. ANG. SCO. ET. HIB. &c PRO. rev. crowned quartered shield of arms of the Protectorate, date either side of top crown, .PAX. QVÆRITVR. BELLO., edge, straight grained, weight 9.04g (Schneider 367; WR 39 R2; Lessen A2; N.2744; S.3225). Some light hairline marks in the fields, a little wear to the high points otherwise good very fine / about extremely fine.
The milled portrait Twenty Shilling gold pieces and companion thicker Fifty Shilling pieces, with lettered edges that carry Oliver Cromwell's portrait as Lord Protector, along with the silver Halfcrown are the first currency pieces of a non-Royal personage on the British coins dated 1656. Thomas Simon's masterly engraving in miniature of the coins of Cromwell were rightly considered one of the finest examples of the art of die engraving; and were still being used as a model and an inspiration to young die engravers of what could be achieved right up until the Victoria era, when a young Leonard Wyon produced a pattern Crown imitating the Cromwell portrait by Simon.
These Twenty Shilling gold pieces represent the only gold coin that most collectors will be able to obtain, as the thicker Fifty Shilling and the gold pattern Half-Broad are extremely rare, and very seldom seen for sale. They were struck on new machinery set up in Drury House on the Strand, by the French engraver Pierre Blondeau who had invented the edge lettering process with his castaing machine, which he had demonstrated previously in the Commonwealth period in two competitions with the hammered workers in 1651 and 1656. Competition was so rife against the Corporation of Moneyers, that to avoid sabotage the machinery could not be set up in the Tower of London, hence why it was in the Strand, and in late 1656 £2,000 of gold and silver, mostly if not all from another captured Spanish treasure was allocated to Blondeau to make his milled coins such as we have demonstrated here. The Oliver Cromwell portrait coins revert back to the use of Latin in their legends unlike the regular hammered Commonwealth coinage with their legends in plain English.
Provenance:
Ex Spink Coin Auction 147, 4th October 2000, lot 368.
Ex Dix Noonan and Webb, Auction 61, 17th March 2004, lot 588.
The milled portrait Twenty Shilling gold pieces and companion thicker Fifty Shilling pieces, with lettered edges that carry Oliver Cromwell's portrait as Lord Protector, along with the silver Halfcrown are the first currency pieces of a non-Royal personage on the British coins dated 1656. Thomas Simon's masterly engraving in miniature of the coins of Cromwell were rightly considered one of the finest examples of the art of die engraving; and were still being used as a model and an inspiration to young die engravers of what could be achieved right up until the Victoria era, when a young Leonard Wyon produced a pattern Crown imitating the Cromwell portrait by Simon.
These Twenty Shilling gold pieces represent the only gold coin that most collectors will be able to obtain, as the thicker Fifty Shilling and the gold pattern Half-Broad are extremely rare, and very seldom seen for sale. They were struck on new machinery set up in Drury House on the Strand, by the French engraver Pierre Blondeau who had invented the edge lettering process with his castaing machine, which he had demonstrated previously in the Commonwealth period in two competitions with the hammered workers in 1651 and 1656. Competition was so rife against the Corporation of Moneyers, that to avoid sabotage the machinery could not be set up in the Tower of London, hence why it was in the Strand, and in late 1656 £2,000 of gold and silver, mostly if not all from another captured Spanish treasure was allocated to Blondeau to make his milled coins such as we have demonstrated here. The Oliver Cromwell portrait coins revert back to the use of Latin in their legends unlike the regular hammered Commonwealth coinage with their legends in plain English.
Provenance:
Ex Spink Coin Auction 147, 4th October 2000, lot 368.
Ex Dix Noonan and Webb, Auction 61, 17th March 2004, lot 588.