be coined, wore permitted by their charter to have their stamp of an elephant impressed upon whatever pieces should be struck from the metal they imported. "Of these guineas," says Leake, "forty-four and an half were coined out of the pound Troy, to go for twenty shillings each, though they never went for so little."[1] On all the English money of Charles II., coined after 1662, his head is made to look to the left, being the opposite direction to that in which his father's head is placed; and ever since it has been observed as a rule to make two successive sovereigns look in opposite ways on their respective coinages. Private halfpence and farthings of copper and brass, such as were formerly common, had again come into use in the time of the Commonwealth; and they continued to circulate after the Restoration till they were supplanted by an issue of the same description of money from the Royal Mint in 1672—a previous coinage of the year 1665 having been called in after only a very small portion of it had got into circulation. In 1684, the last year of his reign, Charles coined farthings of tin, with only a bit of copper in the middle. The figure, still retained, of Britannia sitting on a globe, holding in her right hand an olive-branch, and in her left a spear and shield, first appears on the copper coinage of this reign—having been modelled, it is said, after the celebrated court beauty, Miss Stewart, afterwards Duchess of Richmond.
The money of James II. is of the same kind with that of his brother. His only farthings and halfpence, like those struck by Charles in the last year of his reign, are of tin, with a bit of copper in the centre. After his abdication he coined money in Ireland out of old brass guns and kitchen utensils, and attempted to make it current as sterling silver. Afterwards even the brass failed, and he was obliged to fabricate crowns, half-crowns, shillings, and sixpences out of pewter.
- ↑ Hist. Account, p. 367
