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Lot 2285
Great Britain. Charles II pattern gold Broad, 1660 PCGS Proof 63. North-2777, Montagu-818 (Sotheby, London, November 1896), KM-Pn30. By Thomas Simon. Reeded Edge, signed "S" beneath the portrait, 30 mm, The stunning reverse legend MAGNALIA DEI translates to mean "The Mighty Acts of God." An astonishingly well-preserved specimen, likely finest known, and of numismatic importance as a gold pattern of similar statue to the famed Petition Crown struck in silver. The collecting opportunity of a lifetime to acquire this historically significant and beautifully made coin! PCGS graded Proof 63+ (Heavy Cameo not noted on grading insert).
When Prince Charles landed at Dover on May 25, 1660, he knelt down and kissed the English soil. It was far more than a merely symbolic gesture. It was a singular event in English history, the moment that set in motion the restoration of the monarchy throughout the land. A month before, Parliament had resolved to proclaim him King Charles II so long as he adhered to the Declaration of Breda pardoning many of his father's enemies and relinquishing the historical, absolute powers of the monarchy. He arrived in London four days later, on his 30th birthday.
There was a great deal to forgive. When he was 18 years old, his father had been beheaded for "treason" in the winter of 1649. He was the only surviving son of his parents, natural heir to the Court of St. James. That right evaporated upon his father's execution. As a teenager, he had accompanied his father during the late campaigns of the Civil War, and had witnessed the end coming. Charles and his mother, Queen Henrietta Maria, had been exiled in 1646 to France and protected by his first cousin, King Louis XIV, during the final years of the war, and all during the Commonwealth and then the disastrous reign of Oliver Cromwell. When Cromwell died, his son, Richard, had shown himself to be feckless. The nation stood in ruins. Cromwell had crushed royalist supporters but Charles II pardoned many who had ransacked the country, only taking revenge on a few dozen of Cromwell's most offensive military and legal supporters.
Charles II was the first of a new breed of monarchs, and much of his passion was devoted to the arts despite the catastrophes of the first years of his reign, including the plague and the Great Fire of London, as well as external wars. He began building what eventually became the royal art collection of paintings, and he was a magnanimous patron of the flourishing sciences as well as of architects such as Christopher Wren. He took a particular personal interest in sculpture and in the engraving arts as well, to which the superb artistry of his wonderful pattern attests, for it was a departure from the medieval style of engraving that had been stereotyped in its lifeless style and flat imagery. Here, instead, we see a lifelike image of the king replete with touching details shown in considerable relief and with artistic flair.
The fabulous work of engraving art seen in this lot, struck only as a pattern, was largely responsible for the introduction of the "milled," or machine-made, coinage as ordered by the King in Council on May 17, 1661, shortly after this piece was created. As the king is known to have taken a personal interest in his effigy, he may well have inspected this very coin, and it is known from contemporary sources that using Simon's superbly engraved dies to make the hammered coins drew considerable dismay from the mint itself: hammering the dies could not bring up the details that distinguished the die-work. It is plausible that this pattern stood as proof that hammering was obsolete as a minting technique.
The short-lived milled coinage using Simon's effigy of Oliver Cromwell and his shield, and struck by Blondeau, ended in August 1660 with removal from the mint of the milled machinery, no doubt partially as a result of jealousy by mint employees fearful of losing their positions as hammered workmen but also in response to the use of that machinery during the hated reign of Cromwell. Cromwell's coins, however, showed that the hammering technique was old fashioned and unable to forestall counterfeiting and the illegal shaving of metal from the uneven edges. A sea-change was in the works.
Thomas Simon, born circa 1623, was one of the sons of Peter Simon of Guernsey, whose older brother, Abraham, was also a medallist. He first came to the attention of Nicholas Briot about 1635 and was engaged as an apprentice at the Royal Mint, his first work being the "Scottish Rebellion" medal of 1639. As was the rule of the day, he also worked as a gem-engraver. His talents caused him to be appointed joint-engraver to the mint in 1645, just as the Civil War was changing England's greatest traditions. In 1648, he was authorized to engrave the Great Seal of the Commonwealth, and then in 1651 he engraved the new Great Seal of England, showing not a king's image but instead an intricately detailed map of England and Ireland on its obverse and, opposite it, a portrayal of Parliament assembled without a monarch. The surrounding legend on this piece proclaimed "1651 IN THE THIRD YEARE OF FREEDOME BY GODS BLESSING RESTORED." This sentiment surely enraged royalists, but in fact Thomas Simon only did as he was ordered, as an employee of the mint. During the Commonwealth, he mostly engraved seals and medals, and was politically neutral.
Simon came to Cromwell's attention immediately after the defeat of the Scots at the Battle of Dunbar (September 3, 1650), a great victory for the Commonwealth army. Simon's talent caused him to be ordered to make effigies of General Cromwell, to be used to strike gold and silver medals as awards to officers and soldiers who took part in the battle. This work was so well received that Simon was next selected to engrave dies for Cromwell's coins, struck from 1656 to 1658, the pieces that were so stunning compared to the coins made by hammer. One feature of Cromwell's coins that had never appeared before on any English coin was the cameo effect created by the frosted texture given to the portrait, and importantly this appears on our gold pattern of 1660 as well. Forrer's Biographical Dictionary of Medallists (volume 5, page 521) quotes an earlier source, Lee's Dictionary of National Biography, which stated that "The frosting observable on these coins appears to have been introduced by Simon."
But Simon's immense talent would not serve him ably enough during the Restoration. Thomas Rawlins was reinstated as chief engraver at the mint. In June 1660 he was ordered to prepare a new portrait of the king, but failed to do so on time, and Simon was given the assignment on August 10 of that year. His portrait was highly regarded but the hammering technique failed to produce coins that met with the mint's approval. His work, however, was so well appreciated that he was given the job of engraving dies for all the new milled coinage. Then came the fateful contest between him and John Roettier, of Flanders, in February 1662. Simon produced the magnificent and now famous Petition Crown, with its stunning royal image and the spectacular edge engraving that petitioned King Charles II to select Simon's work for the royal coinage. Perhaps remembering Simon's medal of 1651, the king himself decided in favor of Roettier, effectively ending Simon's employment at the Royal Mint. He died of the plague in June 1665.
Numismatics is an intriguing science, however, and research provides another explanation for Simon's demise. Challis responded to the traditional view that the king's bias caused Simon's talents to be rejected. A New History of the Royal Mint (pages 349-350) discusses the quality of the puncheons and other minting tools used to produce coins. Challis notes that while Simon's dies were splendid he "had demonstrated his inability to produce dies which would withstand the press" with its intense pressure, and in particular this was seen in puncheons that he produced for the Goldsmiths' Company of London, which annually contracted with him to make a set of three puncheons showing the company's mark, which included a facing leopard's head. In the early 1660s, Challis continues, "Simon's puncheons simply would not withstand normal use." In the end, it was all about economy. Simon blamed the rejection on the poor quality of the silver to which his puncheons were applied by the company, but "the real trouble lay in the inadequacy of the metal from which they were made." And here is the conclusion: "If such an explanation is correct it seems likely that it contains the key to why Simon, regarded by many from his own day to this as one of the finest engravers the Mint has ever had, lost out in the competition with the Roettiers. It was not that Simon was hopelessly disadvantaged at Court by his having willingly served the Protectorate. Rather it was that he could not match the Roettiers in being able to produce dies which, day in day out, would withstand machine production."
To our knowledge, it has not been pointed out before that, on this magnificent pattern, a work of art struck in gold, Thomas Simon placed the Goldsmiths' Company's mark, the face of a leopard, at the base of the king's throat, peering at the world in a silent petition to "remember me" centuries after King Charles and all his contemporaries perished - perhaps another artistic way of saying Magnalia Dei! Estimated Value $100,000-UP
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