Sovereign (British coin)
The sovereign is a British gold coin with a nominal value of one pound sterling and contains of pure gold. Struck since 1817, it was originally a circulating coin that was accepted in Britain and elsewhere in the world; it is now a bullion coin and is sometimes mounted in jewellery. In addition, circulation strikes and proof examples are often collected for their numismatic value. In most recent years, it has borne the design of Saint George and the Dragon on the reverse; the initials of the designer, Benedetto Pistrucci, are visible to the right of the date.
The coin was named after the English gold sovereign, which was last minted about 1603, and originated as part of the Great Recoinage of 1816. Many in Parliament believed a one-pound coin should be issued rather than the 21-shilling guinea that was struck until that time. The Master of the Mint, William Wellesley Pole had Pistrucci design the new coin; his depiction was also used for other gold coins. Originally, the coin was unpopular because the public preferred the convenience of banknotes but paper currency of value £1 was soon limited by law. With that competition gone, the sovereign became a popular circulating coin, and was used in international trade and overseas, being trusted as a coin containing a known quantity of gold.
The British government promoted the use of the sovereign as an aid to international trade, and the Royal Mint took steps to see lightweight gold coins withdrawn from circulation. From the 1850s until 1932, the sovereign was also struck at colonial mints, initially in Australia and later in Canada, South Africa and India—they have again been struck in India for the local market since 2013, in addition to the production in Britain by the Royal Mint. The sovereigns issued in Australia initially carried a unique local design but by 1887, all new sovereigns bore Pistrucci's George and Dragon design. Strikings there were so large that by 1900, about forty per cent of the sovereigns in Britain had been minted in Australia.
With the start of the First World War in 1914, the sovereign vanished from circulation in Britain; it was replaced by paper money and did not return after the war, though issues at colonial mints continued until 1932. While it faded out of usage in Britain, the sovereign was still used in the Middle East and demand rose in the 1950s, to which the Royal Mint eventually responded by striking new sovereigns in 1957. Since then, it has been struck both as a bullion coin and beginning in 1979 for collectors. Although the sovereign is no longer in circulation, it - along with the half sovereign, double sovereign and quintuple sovereign - is still legal tender in the United Kingdom, having survived the decimalisation of the pound in 1971.
Background and authorisation
There had been an English coin known as the sovereign, first authorised by HenryVII in 1489. It had a diameter of, and weighed, twice the weight of the existing gold coin, the ryal. The new coin was struck in response to a large influx of gold into Europe from West Africa in the 1480s, and Henry at first called it the double ryal, but soon changed the name to sovereign. Too great in value to have any practical use in circulation, the original sovereign likely served as a presentation piece to be given to dignitaries.The English sovereign, the country's first coin to be valued at one pound, was struck by the monarchs of the 16th century, the size and fineness often being altered. James I, when he came to the English throne in 1603, issued a sovereign in the year of his accession, but the following year, soon after he proclaimed himself King of Great Britain, France and Ireland, he issued a proclamation for a new twenty-shilling piece. About ten per cent lighter than the final sovereigns, the new coin was called the unite, symbolising that James had merged the Scottish and English crowns.
In the 1660s, following the Restoration of Charles II and the mechanisation of the Royal Mint that quickly followed, a new twenty-shilling gold coin was issued. It had no special name at first but the public soon nicknamed it the guinea and this became the accepted term. Coins were at the time valued by their precious metal content, and the price of gold relative to silver rose soon after the guinea's issuance. Thus, it came to trade at 21 shillings or even sixpence more. Popular in commerce, the coin's value was set by the government at 21 shillings in silver in 1717, and was subject to revision downwards, though in practice this did not occur. The term sovereign, referring to a coin, fell from use—it does not appear in Samuel Johnson's dictionary, compiled in the 1750s.
The British economy was disrupted by the Napoleonic Wars, and gold was hoarded. Among the measures taken to allow trade to continue was the issue of one-pound banknotes. The public came to like them as more convenient than the odd-value guinea. After the war, Parliament, by the Coinage Act 1816, placed Britain officially on the gold standard, with the pound to be defined as a given quantity of gold. Almost every speaker supported having a coin valued at twenty shillings, rather than continuing to use the guinea. Nevertheless, the Coinage Act did not specify which coins the Mint should strike. A committee of the Privy Council recommended gold coins of ten shillings, twenty shillings, two pounds and five pounds be issued, and this was accepted by George, Prince Regent on 3August 1816. The twenty-shilling piece was named a sovereign, with the resurrection of the old name possibly promoted by antiquarians with numismatic interests.
Creation
, elder brother of the Duke of Wellington, was appointed Master of the Mint in 1812, with a mandate to reform the Royal Mint. Pole had favoured retaining the guinea, due to the number extant and the amount of labour required to replace them with sovereigns. Formal instruction to the Mint came with an indenture dated February 1817, directing the Royal Mint to strike gold sovereigns. As one troy pound of 22-carat gold used to be minted into guineas worth 44.5 × £ = £, each troy pound of 22 carat gold was henceforth minted into 46.725 sovereigns, with each coin weighing and containing fine gold.The Italian sculptor Benedetto Pistrucci came to London early in 1816. His talent opened the doors of the capital's elite, among them Lady Spencer, who showed Pistrucci a model in wax of Saint George and the Dragon by Nathaniel Marchant and commissioned him to reproduce it in the Greek style as part of her husband's regalia as a Knight of the Garter. Pistrucci had already been thinking of such a work, and he produced the cameo. The model for the saint was an Italian waiter at Brunet's Hotel in Leicester Square, where he had stayed after coming to London.
In 1816, Pole hired Pistrucci to create models for the new coinage. After completing Lady Spencer's commission, by most accounts, Pistrucci suggested to Pole that an appropriate subject for the sovereign would be Saint George. He created a head, in jasper, of King George III, to be used as model for the sovereign and the smaller silver coins. He had prepared a model in wax of Saint George and the Dragon for use on the crown; this was adapted for the sovereign. The Royal Mint's engravers were not able to successfully reproduce Pistrucci's imagery in steel, and the sculptor undertook the engraving of the dies himself. Pistrucci's sovereign was unusual for a British coin of the 19th century in not having a heraldic design, but this was consistent with Pole's desire to make the sovereign look as different from the guinea as possible.
Pistrucci's George and Dragon design
Pistrucci's design for the reverse of the sovereign features Saint George on horseback. His left hand clutches the rein of the horse's bridle, and he does not wear armour, other than on his lower legs and feet, with his toes bare. Further protection is provided by the helmet, with, on early issues, a streamer or plume of hair floating behind. Also flowing behind the knight is his chlamys, or cloak; it is fastened in front by a fibula. George's right shoulder bears a balteus for suspending the gladius, the sword that he grasps in his right hand. He is otherwise naked—the art critic John Ruskin later considered it odd that the saint should be unclothed going into such a violent encounter. The saint's horse appears to be half attacking, half shrinking from the dragon, which lies wounded by George's spear and in the throes of death.The original 1817 design had the saintly knight still carrying part of his broken spear. This was changed to a sword when the garter that originally surrounded the design was eliminated in 1821, and George is intended to have broken his spear earlier in the encounter with the dragon. Also removed in 1821 was the plume of hair, or streamer, behind George's helmet; it was restored in 1887,
modified in 1893 and 1902, and eliminated in 2009.
The George and Dragon design is in the Neoclassical style. When Pistrucci created the coin, Neoclassicism was all the rage in London, and he may have been inspired by the Elgin Marbles, which were exhibited from 1807, and which he probably saw soon after his arrival in London.
Circulation years (1817–1914)
Early years (1817–1837)
When the sovereign entered circulation in late 1817, it was not initially popular, as the public preferred the convenience of the banknotes the sovereign had been intended to replace. Lack of demand meant that mintages dropped from 2,347,230 in 1818 to 3,574 the following year. Another reason why few sovereigns were struck in 1819 was a proposal, eventually rejected, by economist David Ricardo to eliminate gold as a coinage metal, though making it available on demand from the Bank of England. Once this plan was abandoned in 1820, the Bank encouraged the circulation of gold sovereigns, but acceptance among the British public was slow. As difficulties over the exchange of wartime banknotes were overcome, the sovereign became more popular, and with low-value banknotes becoming scarcer, in 1826 Parliament prohibited the issuance of notes with a value of less than five pounds in England and Wales.The early sovereigns were heavily exported; in 1819, Robert Peel estimated that of the some £5,000,000 in gold struck in France since the previous year, three-quarters of the gold used had come from the new British coinage, melted down. Many more sovereigns were exported to France in the 1820s as the metal alloyed with the gold included silver, which could be profitably recovered, with the gold often returned to Britain and struck again into sovereigns. Beginning in 1829, the Mint was able to eliminate the silver, but the drain on sovereigns from before then continued.
George III died in January 1820, succeeded by George, Prince Regent, as George IV. Mint officials decided to continue to use the late king's head on coinage for the remainder of the year.
For King GeorgeIV's coinage, Pistrucci modified the George and Dragon reverse, eliminating the surrounding Garter ribbon and motto, with a reeded border substituted. Pistrucci also modified the figure of the saint, placing a sword in his hand in place of the broken lance seen previously, eliminating the streamer from his helmet, and refining the look of the cloak.
The obverse design for GeorgeIV's sovereigns featured a "Laureate head" of GeorgeIV, based on the bust Pistrucci had prepared for the Coronation medal. The new version was authorised by an Order in Council of 5May 1821. These were struck every year between 1821 and 1825, but the king was unhappy with the depiction of him and requested a new one be prepared, based on a more flattering bust by Francis Chantrey. Pistrucci refused to copy the work of another artist and was barred from further work on the coinage. Second Engraver William Wyon was assigned to translate Chantrey's bust into a coin design, and the new sovereign came into use during 1825. It did not bear the George and Dragon design, as the new Master of the Mint, Thomas Wallace, disliked several of the current coinage designs, and had Jean Baptiste Merlen of the Royal Mint prepare new reverse designs. The new reverse for the sovereign featured the Ensigns Armorial, or royal arms of the United Kingdom, crowned, with the lions of England seen in two of the quarters, balanced by those of Scotland and the harp of Ireland. Set on the shield are the arms of Hanover, again crowned, depicting the armorial bearings of Brunswick, Lüneburg and Celle. The George and Dragon design would not again appear on the sovereign until 1871.
William IV's accession in 1830 upon the death of his brother George IV led to new designs for the sovereign, with the new king's depiction engraved by William Wyon based on a bust by Chantrey. Two slightly different busts were used, with what is usually called the "first bust" used for most 1831 circulating pieces and some from 1832, with the "second bust" used for the prototype pattern coins that year, as well as for proof coins of 1831, some from 1832 and taking over entirely by 1833. The reverse shows another depiction by Merlen of the Ensigns Armorial, with the date accompanied by the Latin word Anno, or "in the year". These were struck every year until the year of the king's death, 1837.