Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Wood, William (1671-1730)
WOOD, WILLIAM (1671–1730), ironmaster, of Wolverhampton, born on 31 July 1671, is stated to have owned large copper and iron works in the west of England, and to have had a lease of mines upon crown properties in thirty-nine counties of England and Wales. He was also one of the first founders in England seriously to endeavour to manufacture iron with pit coal. His industry was prosperous, and from 1692 to 1713 he resided at the Deanery, Wolverhampton.
In a letter dated Kensington, 16 June 1722, George I commanded that an indenture should be prepared between the king and William Wood, by which Wood was to have the sole privilege and license for fourteen years to coin halfpence and farthings to be uttered and disposed of in Ireland and not elsewhere. It was provided that the quantity coined during the fourteen years should not exceed 360 tons of copper (or in value 100,800l.), the said coins to be of good, pure, and merchantable copper, and approximately of equal weight and size, in order that they might pass as current money. Wood consented to pay the king's clerk or comptroller of the coinage 200l. yearly, and 100l. per annum into the king's exchequer. The patent was passed by the commons on 22 July without any reference having been made either to the Irish privy council or to the lord lieutenant. It was subsequently revealed that the patent had been put up to auction by the king's foreign mistress, the Duchess of Kendal, and had been secured by Wood for a cash payment of 10,000l., in addition to douceurs to the entourage of the duchess. The minting was commenced in January 1722–3, or perhaps before that date, in Phœnix Street, Seven Dials (Freeholders' Journal, 23 Jan. 1723), the coinage being conveyed thence to Bristol and stored there, preparatory to being shipped to various Irish ports (cf. Seyer, Memoirs of Bristol, ii. 75). Seventeen thousand pounds' worth of coin was thus uttered during 1722–3. It was better coin than had been minted by former patentees under Charles II and William and Mary, and a small currency was greatly in demand throughout Ireland. On the other hand, the amount ordered to be coined was greatly in excess of what was needed. Though the workmanship was good, the quality of the coin was poor (30d. being coined out of the same amount of copper as 23d. in England), and the measure involved a tax upon the country of between six and seven thousand pounds a year. The circumstances under which the patent had been granted were held by a section of popular opinion in Dublin to be dishonouring to the nation, and a great clamour was raised, in response to which the Irish House of Commons on 13 Sept. 1723 resolved in committee that the patent was a source of danger to the country, and that ‘W. Wood was guilty of a most notorious fraud in his coining.’ Wood published an injudicious reply in the ‘Flying Post’ on 8 Oct. 1723, and subsequently fanned the popular indignation by the foolish boast that with Walpole's help he would cram the brass down the throats of the Irish, whether they liked it or not. The appearance in April 1724 of the first of Swift's twopenny tracts, called ‘The Drapier's Letters,’ was the signal for a storm of satire and recrimination directed nominally against William Wood. The government of Walpole, after a brief attempt at temporising, gave way before the feeling aroused, and Wood's patent was surrendered in August 1725. A similar fate awaited the patent which Wood had obtained in 1722 to strike halfpence, pence, and twopences for the English colonies in America. The coins under this patent, made of composition called ‘Wood's metal’ or ‘Bath metal,’ and known as the Rosa Americana coinage, only bear the dates 1722 and 1723. These coins, good sets of which now realise 3l., were originally minted at the French Change in Hogg Lane, Seven Dials. By way of compensation for the loss of his patents Wood was granted a pension of 3,000l. a year for eight years. He enjoyed this for three years only, dying in London on 2 Aug. 1730 (Hist. Reg. Chron. Diary, p. 53). He married Mary (Molyneux) of Witton Hall, Staffordshire. On 22 Aug. 1724 John and Daniel Molyneux of Meath Street and Essex Street, Dublin, ironmongers, found it expedient to make a public declaration to the effect that they were in no way concerned with William Wood or his patent (Swift, Works, ed. Scott, vi. 427 n.)
Half a dozen prose squibs against Wood and twice as many in verse are included in Scott's edition of Swift (vols. vii. and xii.). Some of the latter, such as ‘A Full and True Account of the Solemn Procession to the Gallows and the Execution of William Wood, Esquire and Hardware Man,’ or ‘Wood: the Insect,’ or ‘A Serious Poem upon William Wood, Brazier, Tinker, Hardware Man, Coiner, Counterfeiter, Founder, and Esquire,’ may possibly have been written by Swift. A few echoes of the pamphlet-war were heard in England, the parliamentary Jacobite party being responsible for ‘Tyburns Courteous Invitation to W. Wood,’ 1725, and one or two squibs upon Lady Kendal's connection with the affair. An engraving called ‘Wood's Half-pence,’ printed at Dublin in 1724, represents a cart laden with coins in sacks, and dragged by a group of devils, who are lashed by men armed with whips. Tied to the tail of the car is Poverty weeping.
Wood's coinage is figured in Ruding's ‘Annals of the Coinage,’ and in Simon's ‘Essays on Irish Coins,’ 1810, plate vii. There are two varieties of the halfpenny: on some dated 1722 Hibernia holds the harp with both hands; on others of 1722–4 she rests her left arm upon the harp. The farthings resemble the second variety.
[Mason's Hist. of St. Patrick's, Dublin, pp. 330 sq.; Simon's Essay on Irish Coins, 1810, pp. 70 sq.; Ruding's Annals of the Coinage, ii. 68 sq.; Thorburn's Coins of Great Britain and Ireland, ed. Grueber, 1898, pp. 225, 244; Crosby's Early Coins of America, 1875, pp. 145–66; Timmins's Industrial Hist. of Birmingham, p. 240; Anderson's Commerce, iii. 124; Hist. Reg. 1724, pp. 132, 243 sq.; A Defence of the Conduct of the Irish People, 1724; Coxe's Life of Sir R. Walpole, chap. xxvi.; Boulter's Letters, i. 4, 11; The Drapier Demolished, 1724; Letters of Swift, ed. G. Birkbeck Hill, 1899; Craik's Life of Swift, pp. 342, 534; Scott's Life of Swift, p. 285; Lecky's Hist. ii. 425; Mahon's Hist. of England in the Eighteenth Century; Notes and Queries, 5th ser. iv. 47, 6th ser. xii. 8; Wheatley and Cunningham's London, iii. 82; Cat. of Satirical Prints in the Brit. Mus. (vol. i. No. 1749); Brit. Mus. Cat.]