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Research Coins: Electronic Auction

 
425, Lot: 786. Estimate $100.
Sold for $190. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

YORK. Edward IV. First reign, 1461-1470. AR Penny (16mm, 0.78 g, 10h). Heavy coinage. Durham mint, under John Orwell. Struck circa 1461-1462/3. ЄDWΛRD (mullet) RЄX (mullet) ΛnGLI, crowned facing bust; pellets flanking crown / CIVI TAS DVn OLI, long cross pattée; trefoils in quarters, rose in center. Blunt & Whitton a14/bii; Allen 167; North 1544; SCBC 1988A. Near VF, toned. Rare.


From the BRN Collection, purchased from Time Line Originals, January 2006.

The Durham and York mints were the primary source of pennies struck during the latter part of Henry VI's reign and the subsequent reign of Edward IV. According to Allen's study of the Durham mint, in 1460, John Orwell, a prominent London goldsmith, agreed to rent the mint for a year. Upon the acceptance of the succession of Edward IV, the dies Orwell had inherited from the previous mintmaster were rendered obsolete. Nonetheless, Orwell had been the King's engraver in London from 1431 to 1445, so he either made or commissioned new dies for Edward's coinage. Though technically unofficial dies, his dies were accepted for use in striking official currency until 1462/3 when the mint was apparently closed. The Durham mint resumed operation in 1464, at which time it received its first official dies of Edward's reign. This period of closure was probably due to the revocation of the temporalities of the bishop by the king (7 December 1462-17 April 1464), but it also coincides with a general shortage of silver in England. Allen's analysis of the mint, synthesizing a wide array of contemporary records, conclusively debunks the earlier analysis of Blunt and Whitton, who thought that official dies were used until the revocation of the bishop's temporalities, and the local dies were used until his restoration of in 1464. Thus, the present issue is not a 'king's receiver' coinage, as it did not occur while the king held the bishop's temporalities, but rather during a period in which the mint was rented to a mintmaster under the bishop's authority.