n, individual stores of wealth were also vulnerable. There were no high street banks where coins could be deposited for safekeeping. From classical times to the twenty-first century, people across the entire spectrum of society have stored valuables in hoards to be retrieved when peace returns.
The diarist Samuel Pepys notes one such incident. On 13 June 1667, fearing imminent invasion as Dutch ships sailed up the Medway, he had his wife and father bury about £1,300 in gold coins at his country house in Brampton, Cambridgeshire. Some days later he fell out with his wife on account of how badly she had hidden them in the garden. However, it wasn’t until 10 October that he set about digging them up.
This wasn’t the first time Pepys resorted to these measures. The previous year he buried a hoard including wine and parmesan cheese as well as gold in his garden in London as the Great Fire advanced.
On the March
Financing campaigns overseas impacted coin production in different ways. The Peninsular War (1808–14) between Bourbon Spain and Portugal, assisted by Britain, and the occupying forces of the First French Empire was a catalyst for the return of the large-scale minting of gold coins in Britain. Dated 1813, these coins came to be known as the military guinea because they were shipped to the Duke of Wellington for use in the Iberian Peninsula. These were the last guineas to be struck and about 360,000 were produced in total.
On occasion, war necessitated the production of coins of other states. In 1815, The Royal Mint made French Louis d’Or twenty-franc gold coins to supply to British troops across the channel. The government stressed they were official, claiming approval by the exiled Louis XVIII, but French authorities saw things differently, insinuating they had not been made to the correct standard.
Maria Theresa (1740–80) was the only female ruler of the Hapsburg dominions. During her reign the Austrian Mint started striking a popular trade coin: the silver thaler. Like The Sovereign in the Middle East, the silver thaler was an accepted form of payment across North Africa during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
When Mussolini invaded Abyssinia in 1935, the Italians need thalers to pay their way through the region. Hitler had annexed Austria and was able to seize the dies from the Austrian mint and send them to his Italian ally, allowing Mussolini’s army to produce the coins they needed.
This was a time of growing international tension. Britain also had interests in the region and needed thalers for the same reason. The Royal Mint was able to copy the dies to create their own coins and production of the ostensibly Austrian thaler carried on in London until the early 1960s.
Footing the Bill
War is often a catalyst for currency reform and the years leading up to the First World War were a golden age for The Sovereign. A model of mass-produced accuracy, its proliferation across the British Empire earned The Sovereign the moniker ‘chief coin of the world’. But, reputation alone couldn’t save it as a circulating coin.
The outbreak of hostilities meant every ounce of gold was needed to pay off debt, build up reserves and finance the war effort. This prompted the government to ask people to hand in their Sovereigns and Prime Minister David Lloyd George’s patriotic plea was heeded. By 1915, gold was no longer part of everyday coinage in London. The Sovereign was replaced by a one-pound note and the Half-Sovereign by a note worth ten shillings.
In 1913, 24,539,672 Sovereigns were struck at The Royal Mint in London. By 1917 this number had dropped to just 1,014,714 and by 1918 it was zero. Despite the demands of the war effort, the exacting production standards of these wartime Sovereigns remained resolutely consistent.
The aftermath of war is accompanied by a multitude of financial pressures: assimilating troops back into civilian life, rebuilding damaged cities and repaying loans taken out to finance the conflict. The true cost comes afterwards, sometimes with big shocks to coinage.
Along with The Sovereign, Britain’s s