All the Best Rubbish

by Ivor Noel Hume

  43. Forged British coins from the Thames. Top (from left to right): copper halfpenny of 1771 reading BRUTUS SEXTUS in the legend instead of GEORGIVS • III • REX; lead half-crown of George III, 1819; brass shilling of George III, 1819; below, gilt brass sovereign of George IV, 1822; lead half-crown of Victoria, 1891; and a lead half-crown of George V, 1924.

  Not all the leaden-sounding coins were forgeries, for in the reigns of Charles II, James II, and William and Mary, tin alloy farthings and halfpennies were issued by the royal mint in an effort to bring business to the depressed Cornish tin industry. Because the metal was soft the coins wore quickly, and because they were easily (though not very profitably) counterfeited, a copper plug was inserted in their centers. The plug was prone to drop out, and that problem coupled with the coins’ soft surfaces ensured that few have survived in good condition. Examples ranging from fairly good to pretty miserable turned up on the Thames foreshore near Queenhithe Dock over an eighteen-month period in 1949 and 1950, never more than one at a time and always within an area of about two square yards. It took me a while to realize that there was any relationship between those isolated discoveries, but I eventually deduced that someone had lost a purse and that its contents were slowly working their way to the surface. Thereupon I armed myself with a shovel and sieve, and, to the politely unquestioning astonishment of lunchtime crowds peering down at me from Southwark Bridge, I proceeded to sieve the beach. But though I removed and screened the top nine inches of silt over the coin-bearing area, not one did I find. A week later, as the tide went down, there was another farthing glistening on the surface. In all, I found thirty-three coins in that two-yard area, ranging in date from 1677 to 1700; twenty-nine farthings, three halfpennies, and a silver sixpence.

  The most recent of the coins in the Queenhithe group was a William III halfpenny whose patina indicated that it was made of tin, but no tin coinage was issued after April, 1694, and this was dated 1700. Thus baffled, I sent the coin to one of Britain’s best-known dealers, explaining that I thought it to be of tin or pewter and asking for his opinion. Back came a prompt and courteous reply saying:

  I have looked at this coin very carefully and have shown it to my colleagues here and we all doubt whether it is in fact tin, as you suggest. It certainly does not look like tin and we have never seen a tin coin with this sort of surface.

  The dealer went on to suggest that the halfpenny should be sent to the Ashmolean Museum for analysis so that we could be sure of its composition. I did so, and the answer was that “The coin is not a true pewter alloy which normally does not contain more than 4% copper, but is what we might call a high copper alloy of tin and lead.”3 The coin did in fact contain sixty parts of tin to twenty of lead and twenty of copper. Shortly after receiving this confirmation, I heard again from the dealer who had discussed the coin both with the author of the British Museum’s catalogue of copper coins, and with the chief clerk of the Royal Mint. The latter had noted that the coin appeared to have been struck from dies of very good quality, and he recalled that during the reign of William III there were instances of official dies being smuggled out of the mint and sold by the engravers to professional counterfeiters. He suggested, therefore, that this apparently unique coin may have been the product of one such forger.

  The coin is of obvious interest in its own right, but more pertinent is its reminder that collectors, curators, dealers, and antiquarians in general have a dangerous tendency to assume that if they have not previously seen an unusual object or if it is not to be found in published sources, it cannot exist. Thus, for example, the discovery of a fragment of German stoneware on an archaeological site in Virginia prompted such a response from a distinguished and immensely knowledgeable British collector. The sherd appeared to be dated 1632, but my collector friend would have none of it, contending that it was of much later style and that the date was really a blurred 1682. The point was of some importance, for not only was the date significant to the historical interpretation of the site, but it appeared also to be the earliest dated stoneware fragment yet discovered in an American excavation. Two months after the Virginia fragment was shown to me, a colleague came to my office with some potsherds he had picked up from the dirt heap of a roadside utility trench in Frankfurt, Germany. Among them was another small fragment decorated with a medallion cast from the same mold as the Virginia sherd, and with the date again appearing to be 1632 (Fig. 44a). Soon afterward I learned of a third, identical fragment that had been unearthed by United States National Park Service archaeologists digging at Jamestown. I took the two newly found fragments (and a photograph of the Jamestown sherd) to England and showed them to the expert, and still he insisted that they had to be blurred impressions of the date 1682.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because,” he replied, “I have never, in a lifetime of collecting, seen this type of decoration dating as early as the 1630s.”

  A year later, and two weeks after I received word of my old friend’s death, I was sent a photograph of an intact jug recently bought in New England by an American collector. On its sides were three medallions identical to the Virginia and Frankfurt sherds, save for being cleanly and unequivocally dated 1634. The jug is decorated both with cobalt blue and manganese purple, the latter color previously thought to have been used no earlier than 1665 (Fig. 44b).

  44a. Fragments from identical blue-decorated medallions from Rhenish stoneware jugs dated 1632; left from Virginia, right from Frankfurt, Germany. The pin measures 1 inch.

  44b. A jug with comparable medallions, but dated 1634 and embellished both in cobalt blue and manganese purple. Height 11⅝ inches.

  Often, over the years, I have caught myself slipping into the trap of assuming that the last word has been said on a subject—particularly if the word happens to have been mine.

  Someone asks, “Can this be a so-and-so?”

  “No,” I firmly reply.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’ve never seen…” Then I remember the German jug and the Queenhithe halfpenny and quickly substitute a more open-minded response.

  The dock at Queenhithe lies about sixty yards upriver from the spot where the coins were found. It is one of the oldest in London’s history and one of the few still retaining something of its original shape, cutting back amid the waterfront warehouses as it did in the Middle Ages (Fig. 45). Although the tide ebbs to leave the dock high, it is by no means dry; the floor is generally covered with a thick layer of slimy mud, too wet to walk on, and in places so deep and soft that one can sink to the knees in seconds—how far above the knees I never discovered. The only artifact that I ever discovered in the dock was an eighteenth-century leather shoe in whose toe was hidden a brass “coin” resembling a gold half-guinea of Queen Anne (Fig. 46). It was a counter made in Nuremburg for the English market, and it said as much on the reverse: IOHANN-IACOB-DIETZ-REICH•COUNTERS, but in letters so small that it could well have passed for a half-guinea. Indeed, it probably did so, for why else would someone hide it in his shoe?

  On the day that I was writing this part of the chapter I was visited by Mrs. Helen Camp, director of the archaeological excavations at Pemaquid in Maine, who brought with her an extremely corroded and, at first sight, unidentifiable coin. All that was visible on one side was the nape of a neck and the letters RE, and on the other, traces of four shields and the letters CO, half a B, and a D, but their spacing left little doubt that the inscription had originally read IOHANN•IA]COB•D[EITZ. Comparing it with the Queenhithe specimen showed that the nape of the neck belonged to Queen Anne, and the RE to the word Regina. Without the London parallel, however, it is doubtful that any numismatist could have identified the “coin” from Maine, for as far as I know, the Dietz counter is not illustrated in any book. Until the Pemaquid example was found, the London counter appeared to be the only known specimen. That the two should have been brought together unheralded and unprompted from sites an ocean apart is another of those coincidences which m
ake one wonder whether, with that kind of luck, a research trip to Las Vegas might be in order.

  45. The Thames waterfront in 1749. Queenhithe Dock is to be seen to the left below the spires of St. Paul’s Cathedral; the steps to the right are now close to the site of the modern Southwark Bridge. It was between these points that most of the postwar Thames mudlarks found their treasures.

  46. This brass counter, resembling a Queen Anne half-guinea, had been hidden in the toe of a shoe lost into Queenhithe Dock. Diameter 1.9 centimeters.

  In addition to Queenhithe, another dock used to cut back into the London shoreline, one infinitely better known, even though it was filled up in 1848 to make room for the city’s fish market. Billingsgate Dock had existed since the tenth century, and in medieval times tolls and customs duties were collected at an adjacent quay. It is not surprising, therefore, that modern collectors searching there could expect to find all manner of relics from almost every period of London’s history. Not only was it the principal loading berth of ocean-going ships, the dock was also close to one of the supposed sites of the Roman bridge. Unfortunately, the building of revetments associated with the fish market left only a minuscule patch of shore that still dried out at low water, and then only at spring tides. Although the exposed area measured barely twenty feet by twenty-five, I was able to recover more early Roman coins there than at any other spot, the most interesting being an as of the emperor Hadrian (an as being the third lowest copper-alloy denomination) having a galley on its reverse of the kind that would have been seen on the Thames in the second century (Fig. 47).

  From the same stamp-sized patch of shore, and more pertinent from an American point of view, came three pewter coins or tokens minted by authority of James II for use in the New World colonies (Fig. 48). On August 13, 1688, the king’s secretary sent a letter to the Royal Mint written on behalf of the English tin miners urging acceptance of a new coin intended “to pass in his Majesty’s Plantacons & such parts of his Dominions where they only take Spanish money & value all coynes by that Measure….” The so-called plantation tokens were inscribed as being valued at [[img1]]th part of a Spanish real, and the letter noted that “a Ryall being 6d Sterling in value it’s alsoe convenient for his Majesty’s Europian Dominions.”4 Just which European dominions the writer had in mind is anybody’s guess, but there is no doubt that these pewter coins were intended for use in the West Indies and in Britain’s continental American colonies where small change was scarce and where Spanish coins freely circulated.

  47. The reverse of an as of the emperor Hadrian (A.D. 117—138) depicting a typical Roman galley of that period. Found in the Thames at Billingsgate where such vessels must once have been seen. Diameter 2.5 centimeters.

  48. Pewter “plantation token” minted by authority of James II, bearing his equestrian portrait, and intended for use in the American colonies. It was valued at l/24th of a Spanish real and was briefly issued in 1688. Found at Billingsgate. Diameter 2.8 centimeters.

  The questions posed by artifacts or antiques are often more provocative than the objects themselves are interesting, and this is certainly true of the three tokens from Billingsgate. Where had they come from? How did they get there, and where were they going? Had they been to America and back, or were they about to make their first crossing when their owner lost them overboard? If outward bound, were they perhaps on their way to Port Royal in Jamaica, which was then Britain’s most important Caribbean base? We know that the tokens were minted no earlier than August, 1688, and presumably no later than December, for on the eleventh James lost his throne. Had they not ended their journey in the Billingsgate mud, the coins could have been consigned to an equally watery grave if they had reached Port Royal before June 7, 1692, when the earthquake broke the town apart and sent half of it sliding and sinking into the sea (Fig. 49).

  Archaeologists and divers began serious attempts to salvage the artifactual remains of sunken Port Royal in 1965, and in the on-again off-again operations since conducted there, a tremendous number of objects have been salvaged (Fig. 50). Although I was twice privileged to dive with Robert Marx, who was in charge of the underwater work, the experience was more depressing than enlightening. The once-visible ruins are now buried under feet of silt, the diver can rarely see his hand in front of his face, and the seabed is strewn not with seventeenth-century treasures, but with modern whisky bottles, beer cans, and automobile tires. It is a far cry from the experience of a British diver who went down in 1859 and reported that he “landed among the remains of ten or more houses, the walls of which were from 3 to 10 feet above the sand.” A month later the same diver noted that he had found Port Royal’s Fort James in a remarkable state of preservation and the water exceedingly clear. “At times,” he wrote, “I could see objects 100 feet away from me.”5 Alas, not even the blue Caribbean has been spared man’s muddying of the waters.

  49. A contemporary artist’s imaginative impression of the destruction of Port Royal, Jamaica, in the great earthquake of 1692. Fort James is shown in plan form in the foreground. From a broadsheet in the British Museum.

  50. Port Royal as it was to be seen from the harbor in the mid-nineteenth century. Ships lie at anchor over the submerged part of the town.

  Among the artifacts brought up from the archaeologists’ slices into the silted bottom came a lidded measure or mug (one of many fine pieces of pewter recovered), having an inscription engraved around its girth reading “William Deaven att ye Ship Tavern one St mary hill,” and on its lid and handle the initials W.D. and WDM respectively (Fig. 51). At first glance one might have been tempted to assume that William Deaven was a Port Royal tavern keeper, but he wasn’t, and the subsequent pursuit of him provided a typical example of the marriage of archaeological evidence and historical research, complete with red herrings and seemingly dead ends. It began when I remembered that there is a parish of St. Mary at Hill in London with a church of that name rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren after the Great Fire of 1666. I did not immediately recall that the street in front of the church is named St. Mary Hill and leads directly to Billingsgate Dock, but when I saw this on the map (Fig. 52), I was convinced that here was the location of William Deaven’s Ship tavern; the trick was to prove it.

  51. William Deaven’s pewter measure from his tavern on London’s St. Mary Hill, recovered by divers from the sunken city of Port Royal. The mug must have been made no later than 1684. Height 5½ inches.

  52. London Bridge, Billingsgate Dock, and St. Mary Hill in 1754.

  In 1889, George C. Williamson published a new and vastly enlarged edition of a catalogue of British seventeenth-century tradesmen’s tokens originally compiled by the veteran collector William Boyne. The catalogue which still bears his name (and known simply and familiarly as “Boyne”) lists a great many tokens struck on behalf of tavern keepers. This, then, was the obvious first place to look—but, disappointingly, William Deaven was not among them. The next question was whether Boyne listed anyone else living on St. Mary Hill at the sign of the “Ship”—and it did. A token bearing a ship in full sail on one side, with the inscription ON ST. MARY HILL M.N. on the other, was issued by margaret north in 1668. The inscription read very much like william deaven’s “one St mary hill,” and the triple initials on the tankard’s handle showed that his wife’s first name began with an M. Was it possible, therefore, that he acquired the Ship tavern by marrying the widowed Margaret North?

  So well did the clues fit together that I was reluctant to spoil it all by taking my reasoning the last clinching miles and to find out whether the union of William Deaven and Margaret North was recorded in the marriage register of St. Mary at Hill. Nevertheless, it had to be done—though when the answer arrived I wished I had left it alone. Deaven’s name was not there; instead it was found in the register of the Vicar General of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the entry reading as follows:

  1684 Sept 5. William Devon of St. Mary Athill, London, Vintner, Widower, about 45, & Dorcas Walton of St. Magn
us the Martyr, London, widow, about 40; at Tooting, Surrey.

  So I seemed to be half right. The Port Royal mug had come from William Deaven’s London tavern, but he, it seemed, had not married Margaret North. The Guildhall Library’s research showed that William Devon (Deaven or Deavon) was paying diocesan tithes in the parish of St. Mary at Hill as early as 1674, but no record could be found of any “Ship” tavern. The final nail in the coffin of my theory was hammered home by the revelation that Margaret North’s name did figure in another of the St. Mary at Hill registers. She was buried there on December 6, 1656. So that seemed to be that.

  If you (who used to be cloyingly referred to as “dear reader”) have a penchant for detective fiction, you will have detected an obvious flaw in the evidence. If Margaret North died in 1656, how did she manage to issue a trade token in 1668? Prompted by this paradox, the librarians looked again and discovered that John and Margaret North of St. Mary at Hill had five children born between 1651 and 1661, one of whom, Margaret, was baptized in 1656. The death record was obviously that of the infant daughter—demonstrating the kind of pitfall that awaits us along the paths of historical research. John North died in 1665, and therefore the evidence of the token shows that his widow carried on his business after rebuilding their premises following the Great Fire which had left nothing standing on St. Mary Hill. No record of Margaret’s death has been found, but as William Deaven was a widower when he remarried in 1684 at the age of forty-five, it is entirely possible that he had previously been married to the widow of John North. If we assume that she would have been about seventeen when she bore her first child in 1651, Margaret North would have been an eligible thirty-one in 1665, and the same age as William Deaven.