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Sale 98
Lot 2883
Great Britain. Crown, 1658/7. S.3226; ESC-10; L&S-1; Dav-3773. By Thomas Simon. Oliver Cromwell, 1653-1660. Laureate bust of Cromwell left. Reverse; Crowned shield of the Protectorate. Inscribed edge. Superbly struck; with exquisite old-cabinet toning, steel blue over reflective fields. Usual die-crack across the base of the portrait. A stunning specimen and among the finest known. NGC graded MS-64 Prooflike. WINGS. Estimate Value $15,000 - 20,000
When Charles Stuart was crowned at Westminster Cathedral on February 2, 1626, attended by hundreds of lords and admirers watching the majestic ceremony, the farthest thought he could have had was that an unambitious, obscure country gentleman would one day challenge, and then terminate, his inherited role as King Charles I of England. And yet that is precisely what happened.
He had been born on the eve of the year 1600, and by all accounts he grew up to be a quiet man of refined tastes. He knew several languages, loved music and dramatic plays, was studious and devoted to collecting fine art. He was a dignified man. He never expected to be king but that role fell into his lap when his older brother, Prince Henry, died in childhood in 1612.
While even tempered, King Charles also believed absolutely in his divine right to rule, and soon he began quarreling with members of his Parliament over royal prerogatives. Schemes were launched against him; some included his closest friend, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. The king continued to insist that his powers were not the business of Parliament: they had been given to him by God. A few months after he ascended the throne, he further irritated many at Court by marrying Henrietta Maria of France, a 15-year-old Catholic princess. Three years later, Villiers was murdered by a fanatic, leaving Charles without his closest confidant. In fact, it was a horror which the king barely survived. They were more than close.
Parliamentarians objected to Charles's lavish spending on art and artists (as patron), and across his realm commoners began to despise him for raising taxes to pay for art and to wage war on old enemies. The king's quiet disposition was now seen as arrogance. By 1629, he was ruling alone, having dismissed Parliament for the fourth time. His religious stance evolved into repression, and it caused both Catholics and Puritans to sail to the American colonies, in search of a new life. But the Scots would not emigrate, and in Ireland rebellion was a household word. What had begun as a peaceful transition in the monarchy had become a king at odds with his subjects at large. At Court, he had loyal attendants. Elsewhere, treason was at hand. War loomed.
Following the rise of unrest in Scotland, the king was forced to call parliament back into session to raise funds for war. Then late in 1641 he faced military insurrection in Ireland. His powers were finally challenged when, quarreling again with parliament, he attempted to have five legislators arrested. In 1642, civil war broke out in England. The king faced enemies at home, in Scotland and in Ireland. His hold on the Crown was so insecure that he fled London, making Oxford his new headquarters. The nation was divided, and in tatters. An Irish army landed in the northwest. A Scottish army moved ever more southward. In the homeland, the Puritans who opposed the king selected one of their own, a country gentleman, to lead their army. His name was Oliver Cromwell. His surprising military skills revealed themselves in battle after battle, routing the king and his dwindling army to the point that the monarch began hiding in orchards, in ditches, and even in priest's holes. His dispirited army, stretched thin and fragmented, began surrendering. The end was approaching.
All the while, King Charles's financing appeared as coinage made at various temporary mints, and was often made from silverware, or plate-some donated, some seized. The civil war was arduous. Four years into it, Charles surrendered to the Scots, who turned him over to his enemies in Parliament. Their general, Oliver Cromwell, defeated all lingering royalist resistance within a year. The civil war ended. Charles was imprisoned. Early in 1649, Parliament set up a new High Court of Justice. The captured king's trial as a "tyrant, traitor, murderer, and public enemy" began on January 20. He listened to his accusers but refused to plead before commoners except to call them lawless. On the 27th, the court found him guilty and sentenced him to death. He was beheaded on a scaffold set up in Whitehall, at the very center of his former kingdom, on January 30, 1649, with a single blow from a sword. His last words were these: "I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible Crown, where no disturbance can be."
Now lacking a king, the nation entered an interregnum called the Commonwealth of England, initially including Wales and eventually Scotland and Ireland. For some time, fighting continued here and there around the former kingdom, now called a republic. The new Parliament, in which full power was vested, became a place more of arguing than of governing. New money was issued using the traditional hammered method, pieces of thin gold and silver bearing the legend The Commonwealth of England. Each coin also claimed "God With Us." These were minted primarily from 1649 through 1657, although a few later-dated pieces occur. But the money's claims disguised the reality that the nation was essentially ungoverned and in chaos. Reforms were delayed. A hoped-for new constitution stalled. Law and order returned only at the close of 1653 when the Army Council at last produced England's first written constitution, called the Instrument of Government. It appointed Oliver Cromwell, the former general, as The Lord Protector of England. He governed essentially as a dictator, although following the laws of the constitution and its revision in 1657.
Among the finest mementoes of the brief period of English history known as The Protectorate was the era's equivalent of advertising its authority to rule, a new kind of coinage made by an imported minting method. Each coin depicted "the Great Emancipator" facing left with a laurel wreath on his head, and an especially elegant crowned shield on its reverse. Never before had Englishmen seen such coins, such elegant money. The most talented engraver of his day, Thomas Simon, created the images. The coins were struck using mechanical presses, and these produced bold, beautifully detailed images. The coins advertised that a new government had arrived, proclaimed on gleaming new coins! But all too soon the Protector died of natural causes. Within two years of the first appearance of Cromwell's money, what remained of the Commonwealth dissolved again into chaos, lacking a leader. The executed king's son returned from exile in France in 1660, and the monarchy was restored. No former supporters of the Commonwealth wanted to be seen as other than loyal to the new king, Charles II, and least of all did the king's subjects wish to be found in possession of any of the money made without royal consent. Some coins issued during 1649-1658 went into hiding. Most were destroyed. Almost none survived in sparkling, pristine condition, as seen on this fabulous crown-one of the finest known examples of the coins of Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector.
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| Realized $34,075 |
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