Back to Milled Coinage

THE COIN MILL

In 1662/3 England’s coinage went over permanently to machine-made coins. ‘Milled’ coinage means coinage made on a mill, an old word for a machine. Mills were used to turn out strips of metal to a consistent thickness, from which the blanks were cut. The coins were then struck on a screw press machine. The first machines used in London for the new milled coinage of Charles II were made by Pierre Blondeau. This engraving (left) was made for an article about work at the Tower mint in London for The Royal Magazine of February 1761. Although the description is almost a century after the milled coinage of Charles II started to appear, the process had not really altered:

‘The stamping …is almost instantly performed by means of an engine worked by three or four men. This engine works on a spindle like that of a printing press; to the point of which the die containing the head is fixed by a screw, and in a little sort of cup that receives it, is placed the reverse: between these dies the piece of metal, already cut round to the size, and if gold, exactly weighed, is placed; and by once pulling down the spindle with a jerk, is compleatly stamped.

It is amazing to see with what dexterity the coiner performs this; for as fast as the men can turn the engine, so fast does he supply it with metal, putting in the unstamped piece with his forefinger and thumb, and twitching out the piece that has received the stamp with his middle finger.

But the gold and silver pieces are not finished with this operation, they are taken to another apartment, where they are milled around the edges; but nobody is permitted to see this part of the process, the operation being kept secret.’

From the THE ROYAL MAGAZINE, FEBRUARY 1761

That last paragraph refers to finishing off of the edge of gold and silver. In some cases this meant stamping an inscription around the edge. If it was absent then it meant someone had sliced off some bullion, a criminal offence that could mean death. A crown of Charles II of 1668 has these words around the edge:

DECVS . ET . TVTAMEN . ANNO. REGNI .VICESIMO +

It means ‘An ornament and protection, in the twentieth year of the reign’. Obviously, coins of other dates modified the number of years. Incidentally, Charles II here ignored the Commonwealth and Oliver Cromwell, and dated his reign to the year his father, Charles I, was executed. Although the edge inscription is normal, it was by no means universal. The crown of James II illustrated at the top of the page has no such inscription.

Decus et Tutamen was suggested by the diarist John Evelyn (1620-1706). It is a line from the Roman poem The Aeneid by Virgil (Book V, line 262), though the poem used it in a very different context. Evelyn had seen it on a printed picture frame in a book belonging to Cardinal Richelieu at the Louvre in about 1644. The idea was simply to stop the clipping of coins, which had become rife with the old hammered coins, though these remained in circulation until the mid-1690s. This passage shows just how potent an issue it could be since it cheated everyone and made the King effectively a cheat too.

One cannot without just Indignation, but deplore the unsufferable Abuse of it, by that cursed Race and Swarms of Clippers, and their Associates in Iniquity …For Money being the common Pledge and Pawn between Man and Man, becomes the standard and Measure of the Worth and Value of everything … he that either diminishes it or sophisticates it, does as much as in him lies, make the King as great a Cheat and Impostor as himself … for which no Punishment seems too great to be inflicted…

That now our current Mill’d Moneys have all this while been less obnoxious to this injurious practice of Clippers, is certainly due to a less degenerate Age, or the Contrivance of the Circumscription about the Tranche or Edge of the thickest Pieces, and Crenelling of the small and thinner, which for ought I know is Modern and its Inventor (who ever he were) worthy the Honor of Medal himself; whether due to Monsieur Blondeau, our Industrious Rawlins, or Symon (Brother to the late squalid Imbosser) Gravers of the Royal Mint to King Charles the First and Second, or improv’d by the Direction of Mr Slingsby, to whom I suggested the Decus et Tutamen out of a Viniet in Cardinal de Richlieu’s ‘[sic] Greek Testament, printed at the Louvre, hindering his intended addition (in Armis) which neither would have become the Impress, nor stood gracefully in the Circle.

John Evelyn, Numismata, London 1697, 224-5

In 1696 the old coinage was cancelled and a great new coinage initiated. See 1696 Recoinage.