CNG 108, Lot: 1225. Estimate $1500. Sold for $1500. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

SCOTLAND. James VIII. Pretender, 1688-1766. Pattern AR Guinea (26mm, 7.34 g, 6h). Dies by J. Roettiers. Dated 1716 (Struck 1828 by Matthew Young). Laureate and draped bust right / Crowned cruciform coats-of-arms with thistle at center; scepters in angles. Burns 2; Woolf 33.2; Dundee 347; SCBC 5725. Superb EF, attractively toned, a few minor planchet flaws on obverse.

Although the dies were engraved in 1716 by Roettiers, no specimens are known to have been struck at that time. All extant examples were struck by the celebrated coin dealer Matthew Young in 1828. Young presented the dies to the British Museum in 1829.

James VIII became the heir to the Jacobite cause on the death of his father, the ousted James VII (II). Known today as the Old Pretender, James was recognized as the rightful king of England and Scotland by France, Spain, and the Papal states. Two campaigns attempted to return him to the throne: a landing near the Firth of Forth in 1708, was blocked by the arrival of the British navy, and a failed uprising of the clans in the north of Scotland in 1715. On his return from the second attempt James found himself unwelcome in France, and the Old Pretender lived out the rest of his days in exile in Rome.