of Cordofan. The shape of this money is very peculiar, somewhat resembling that of a large nail, if hammered out perfectly flat and thin. The value of each piece is one para; consequently forty are worth one Egyptian piastre, which is equivalent to 2 d. sterling or thereabouts. This money is made by the Arabs at Wad Desakki, a village forty or fifty miles from Lobeyed, where iron ore abounds close to the surface of the ground. The ore is smelted with charcoal fires. El Obeyed is about three hundred miles west of the White Nile, in about 13° 15′ N. L. A paper on this subject by Mr. Holroyd, with an engraving of a specimen of the money, will be found in the Numismatic Chronicle, vol. I. p. 212.

JANUARY 23, 1851.

EDWARD HAWKINS, ESQ., President, in the Chair.

The following Presents were announced and laid upon the Table :

Discorso della Religione antico de Romani, insieme un' altro discorso della Castrameatione et disciplina militare et par essercitij antichi de detti Romani. Small 4to. Lyons, 1569. With some plates of Roman coins (probably belonging to a work by Æneas Vico), bound in the same volume.

Index to the Report and Minutes of Evi

PRESENTED BY

MR. MOULE.

dence on the British Museum. Folio. MR. BERGNE. 1850.

Mons. Edouard Laplane, of St. Omer, Assistant Secretary of the Society of Antiquaries of the Morinie, author of a History of Sisteron, etc., etc., was ballotted for and elected an Associate of the Society.

Read-An account, by Mr. Hawkins, of a hoard of coins, which have lately been found under the hearth-stone of an old farm house at Bampton, near Oxford. The house is called Ham Farm, and is said to have been part of the out-buildings of a castle, once the residence of King John. The hoard consisted of four hundred and

C

fifty-six pieces of money, commencing with James I., and extending to the year 1673. The following is a catalogue of the pieces found, specifying the mint-marks and dates. It is remarkable that this hoard contains coins of almost every year of the reigns of Charles I., and Charles II. down to the year 1673; that there is not a single piece smaller than a half crown; not a specimen of Briot's money, nor of the uncertain local mints of Charles I.; nor of the coinage of the Commonwealth :

A letter from Richard Sainthill, Esq,, of Cork, addressed to James

D. Cuff, Esq. respecting

1st. Some pennies and half-pennies of Edward I. II. or III. in Mr. Sainthill's collection, which, from the style of the bust, the weight, and the occurrence of the English n, and of annulets in the legends, assimilate to the coins of Edward III., though from the title of the king on the obverse reading EDW. R. ANGL. DNS. HYB. they would seem to belong to Edward I. Mr. Sainthill is of opinion that these coins, many specimens of which from the Mints of London, Durham and York, were exhibited, belong to Edward III.

AD

2dly. The appropriation of those coins in gold and silver, hitherto classed as belonging to Edward IV., which have as mint-marks, a boar's head, a rose and sun united, or both those mint-marks on the obverse and reverse of the same coin respectively; but which Mr.

Sainthill considers as having been coined for Edward V. by the order and authority of his Uncle, Richard Duke of Gloucester, the Lord Protector, afterwards Richard III., whose badges or cognizance they bear.* Specimens of the angel and of the groat of each king, bearing the respective mint-marks, accompanied the paper for the purpose of comparison.

Mr. Pfister exhibited a silver medallion of the Emperor Charles V., bearing the date 1537. The obverse represents the half-length figure of the Emperor to the left, at the age of thirty-seven, bearded, the head covered with a flat bonnet, and the hair cut short. He is dressed in rich embroidered garments, holding in his right hand the sceptre, and in his left the Imperial orb and cross. Over his breast hangs the insignia of the Golden Fleece. CAROLVS V. DEI GRATIA ROMAN. IMPERATOR AVGVSTVS REX HIS. ANNO SAL. M. MDXXXVII. ÆTATIS SVÆ XXXVII. Reverse, the grand imperial shield of arms, on the crowned spread eagle, under whose wings appears the device of the Emperor, namely,

*The appropriation to Edward V. of these coins with the boar's head mintmark, was however suggested in Mr. Hawkins' work on the English Silver Coinage, published in 1841. See pp. 278 and 280.

PLVS OULTRE, inscribed on the pillars of Hercules, which, at the Straits of Gibraltar, divide the shores of Europe and Africa. The letters H. R. at the bottom indicate the name of the artist, Henry Reitz, a goldsmith of Leipzig.

The medallion, which is highly interesting, as presenting a dated portrait of the Emperor Charles V., is executed with much skill and beauty; and may vie with the contemporaneous productions of Italian artists of the period. It is cast and afterwards chased.

FEBRUARY 27, 1851.

EDWARD HAWKINS, ESQ., President, in the Chair.

The following Presents were announced, and laid upon the table:

Münzgeschichte des Hauses

von dreizehnten bis zum

Hohenlohe, neunzehnten

PRESENTED BY

Jahrhundert, nach Original-Urkunden

und Münzen verfasst, von Joseph Albrecht,

(Numismatic History of the House of THE AUTHOR. Hohenlohe, from the thirteenth to the

nineteenth century, compiled from original documents and coins. By Joseph Albrecht). 4to. pp. and plates. Öehringen, 1846. Thesaurus selectorum numismatum antiquorum, etc. Auctore Jac. Oiselio. J. C. 4to pp. 570 and Index 11 leaves. Amsterdam, 1677

A large series of foreign sale Catalogues of)

MR. WALTER HAWKINS,

collections of coins and medals, many MR. HAGGARD. marked with the prices.

Read-A paper by Mr. Moule, accompanying a fine silver medal nearly two inches in diameter, struck at Lucerne. Some historical celebrity is conceded to Lucerne, as one of the four forest cantons, the originators of the Swiss confederacy. As the medal commemorates no remarkable event, it was probably struck only as an example of the professional talent of the artist, John Ulrich Brupacher, a