Choice Rawlins Pound with Remarkable Pedigree

Triton XIX, Lot: 961. Estimate $50000. Sold for $50000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

STUART. Charles I. 1625-1649. AR Pound (54mm, 120.20 g, 4h). Declaration type. Oxford mint; im: plume with bads. Dated 1643. CAROLVS : D : G : MAG : BRIT : FRA : ET : HIBER : REX :, Charles, holding reins with left hand and sword in right, on horseback left, trampling arms below; plume to right / EXVRGAT : DEVS : DISSIPENTVR : INIMICI ·:·:·, RELIG : PROT : LEG/ANGL : LIBER : PAR in two lines between parallel lines; three Oxford plumes and XX (mark of value) above, 1643 below. Morrieson, Oxford A/2 (same obv. die as illustration); Brooker 863 (same rev. die); North 2397; SCBC 2938. Good VF, toned, a few light marks. Well struck on a broad flan.

Ex Spink Numismatic Circular CXII.2 (April 2004), no. HS1642; V. J. E. Ryan Collection (Part II, Glendining’s, 22 January 1952), lot 1225; Thomas Willoughby, 1st Lord Middleton (1672-1729) (Sotheby, 15 March 1926) lot 58; Sir Francis Willougby (1668-1688).

The first son of Francis Willougby ‘Willughby’ the elder (1635-1672), a founding father of British ornithology, Francis Willougby the younger was born in 1668. He had an unhappy childhood losing his father at the age of four, and later had a troubled relationship with his step-father Sir Josiah Child who his mother married in 1676. Sir Josiah Child was an immensely successful merchant and politician who rose to become the Governor of the East India Company. While serving as Governor, Sir Josiah prosecuted a war against the Mughal Empire that would later be known as Child’s War. Sir Francis ran away from home at the age of 12 and later took Sir Josiah to court claiming he had squandered his inheritance. Sir Francis formed a collection of coins, which included an important group of issues struck during the English Civil War and the Great Rebellion in Ireland. Amongst these was the rare Oxford Pound offered here. The collection passed to his younger brother Thomas on Sir Francis’s death in 1688 and remained intact until it was sold by Sotheby in 1926.