Gun money, war and ‘farts for the bishop’

Pierce Grace on the military and political history behind the birth of token coinage – where coins have more face than intrinsic value – in Ireland

“Here’s to the pious, glorious and immortal memory of the great and good King William III, Prince of Orange, who saved us from rogues and roguery, slaves and slavery, knaves and knavery, popes and popery, brass money and wooden shoes and whoever denies this toast may he be slammed, crammed and jammed into the muzzle of the great gun of Athlone, and the gun fired into the pope’s belly, and the pope into the devil’s belly, and the devil in to hell, and the door locked, and the key in an Orangeman’s pocket, and may we never lack a brisk protestant boy to kick the arse of a papist and here’s a fart for the bishop of Cork”.
The Orangeman’s toast must be one of the greatest pieces of doggerel ever written, and it is much better than the corresponding Jacobite toast, to ‘the little gentleman in the black velvet waistcoat’, which celebrates the mole that built the molehill over which the good King William’s horse stumbled, throwing the king, fracturing his collar bone resulting in pneumonia from which he died.
Token money
The ‘brass money’ referred to in the Orangeman’s toast refers to a token coinage introduced into Ireland by James II in 1689. A token coinage is one where the coins have a face value greater than their intrinsic value. Until the middle of the 17th century official Irish coins were made of gold, silver or copper and had intrinsic value based on the metal content of the coin.
From the reign of Henry VIII onwards, Irish coins were stamped with the symbol of the harp, which is still retained on Irish Euro coins to this day. The value of coins between Ireland and England varied and many coins were ‘clipped’ to get the precious metal they contained thus reducing the value of the coin. The turbulent 17th century saw a great scarcity of official coin in Ireland and many towns and corporations issued their own trade tokens to facilitate commerce.
In 1680, the Lord Lieutenant, James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormond, issued a proclamation banning the unofficial production of tokens and introduced new official Charles II copper halfpennies. Foreign gold and silver coins were used for larger transactions and their value and circulation in Ireland was regulated by another proclamation of 1683. So it appeared that confidence in the currency was restored and a coinage acceptable to the Irish population was in circulation and all was well.
Charles II died in 1685 and was succeeded by his Catholic brother, James II, who granted a patent to John Knox, Lord Mayor of Dublin, to continue the minting of Irish copper halfpence under the name of the new king, IACOBVS II DEI GRATIA MAG BR FRA HIB REX. (James II by the grace of God, of Great Britain, France and Ireland, King).
The old pretender
In 1688, Mary of Modena, James II’s queen gave birth to a son, James (the old pretender), setting off the train of events that would see James lose his English and Scottish crowns to his daughter by his first marriage, Mary II and her husband William III. James fled to France to the court of Louis XIV, who was at war with William.
The Irish Parliament declared for James and passed a bill of attainder against any who rebelled against him. James was persuaded that the way to regain his English and Scottish kingdoms was to come to Ireland, where the Lord Lieutenant, Richard Talbot, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell and the Parliament were loyal to him; more importantly a Catholic Irish army was at his disposal.
However, what was not at his disposal was money. Fearing the worst, Irish merchants and landowners, mostly Protestant, had moved large amounts of gold and silver coin out of Ireland for safekeeping.
Lady Day
James arrived in Kinsale on March 12, 1688 and was in Dublin on the last day of the year, March 24, 1688. (Until 1752, Britain and Ireland followed the Juilan calendar, which had the year change on Lady Day, March 25. Confusingly, March 24, 1688, was followed by March 25, 1689.
When the Gregorian calendar was eventually adopted everything moved forward 12 days. Thus, until recently the financial year began on April 6, the Orthodox Church still celebrates Christmas on the January 6 and the Battle of the Boyne is celebrated on the July 12 instead of the July 1).
On New Year’s Day, 1689, James issued a proclamation in Dublin revaluing a variety of gold and silver coins effectively raising the value by 20 per cent for gold and 8 per cent for silver. He had supplies of French three-sous silver coins to pay his French troops and he revalued these also by a staggering 150 per cent.
He also laid aside his patent to John Knox and no more Irish copper halfpennies were minted after 1688.
To overcome the shortage of money, William Bromfield, an English Quaker and one time surgeon, came up with the idea of introducing a token coinage and he became one of the five commissioners of the mint established by James II at 61 Capel Street, Dublin, in 1689. Instead of minting coins from precious metals, coins of brass and other base metals would be struck and ‘accepted as current money among the subjects of our realm’.
It was made clear that the token coinage was a temporary arrangement, and that as soon as James had recovered his British thrones, the Irish coins would be redeemed by gold and silver ones.
The presses at Capel Street, known as the ‘James’ (named after the king) and ‘Duchess’ (named after the Duchess of Tyrconnell) presses, began churning out coins around the clock with two teams of men working 12-hour shifts night and day.
They began with copper and brass sixpences in June 1689 and half crowns and shillings in July. The engraving of the first coins was of a high standard, showing the king’s head on obverse and a crown and crossed scepters on the reverse. As well as the year of production the month the coin was struck was also engraved; this was thought to facilitate their orderly withdrawal from circulation when eventually replaced by gold and silver coins.
A new Irish mint
However, even supplies of brass were scarce and William King, future Protestant Archbishop of Dublin, commented disparagingly that the coins were made from ‘a mixture of old guns, old broken bells, old copper, brass, pewter, old kitchen furniture (pots and pans) and the refuse of metals molten down’.
In spite of this the money seems to have been accepted initially and mint employees caught counterfeiting (always a sign that something is deemed valuable) in November 1689 were hanged.
The country was scoured for metal to produce the coinage and several cannon guns were melted down and turned into coin, hence the term ‘gun money’ used to describe the Jacobite coinage.
Pewter pennies and halfpennies were struck in 1690, and to save metal, the size of some of the coins was reduced. In March 1690, the Duchess press was moved to Limerick and a second mint was established at the Deanery in that city.
Between the two mints approximately £1,100,000 to £1,500,000 worth of gun money was struck between June 1689 and October 1690.
As the war progressed and the Jacobites suffered defeat after defeat, confidence in the brass money decreased. Matters were not helped by the fact that James’s own government was not keen on accepting brass money in lieu of gold or silver, and his French officers refused to be paid in it.
Some claim that the Irish referred to the pewter money as uim bug, or soft copper, and this may be the origin of the English word ‘humbug’ meaning a deception; however, the use of ‘humbug’ was not recorded in English until 1750.
After the Boyne, James decamped again to France leaving his Irish army to its own devices. William’s forces took over the whole country with the exception of Limerick, Athlone and Galway. After the Battle of Aughrim, the remaining Irish troops withdrew to Limerick where they were besieged.
William seized the Dublin mint after the Battle of the Boyne but the Limerick mint continued to produce coins including ‘Hiberniaes’, which were halfpennies and farthings stamped with the figure of Hiberniae on the reverse, the first Irish coins to feature this device.
William issued a proclamation from Finglas reducing the brass money to face value; the half crowns and large shillings were to be accepted as halfpennies and the small shillings and sixpences as farthings. On February 25, 1690 (1691 in the Gregorian calendar), the brass money was demonetized completely by William and deemed worthless.
The Jacobites at Limerick facing reality followed suit and first devalued and then demonetized their own money, effectively bankrupting many people. The only compensation to be had was a receipt from the Jacobite treasury that full repayment would be made when James recovered his thrones.
Limerick surrendered in October 1691, and 11,000 Irish soldiers left for France in the ‘Flight of the Wild Geese’. The country was broken and broke.
Wood’s halfpence
William’s new Irish government introduced a new regal copper coin in 1692, but these were viewed with suspicion. Eventually William’s copper coins were accepted but the Irish continued to use a range of gold and silver English and foreign coins for larger transactions. Calculating the exact value of these coins was to be a constant problem throughout the 18th century, as was counterfeiting.
An attempt to introduce a new halfpenny made of a mixture of brass, copper and zinc in 1722 met with huge resistance in Ireland. These were the famous Wood’s halfpence. Following a campaign led by the Irish Parliament and Jonathan Swift, who derided the coins in his Drapier Letters, Wood’s halfpence were eventually withdrawn in 1725.
The provision of a coinage for Ireland remained a problem until 1826 when Irish coins ceased to be minted and were replaced by United Kingdom coins, which circulated at the same value throughout Britain and Ireland; prior to 1826, a British shilling was worth 13 Irish pennies, but only 12 British pennies.
It would be 100 years before Irish coins would be minted again when the beautiful Saorstat Éireann coins — designed by Percy Metcalfe — were issued in December 1928. Irish and British coins held parity until 1978 when Ireland, but not Britain, joined the European Monetary System.
Representative money
While James II’s brass money was a disaster for Ireland it really only failed because James failed to regain his thrones. Bromfield’s brilliant idea was that money could be representative, and the idea caught on quickly. James had promised to redeem his brass money with gold or silver when he had regained his crowns, but unfortunately for the Irish he didn’t succeed. In 1694 the newly established (by William III) Bank of England issued paper notes promising to pay the bearer the face value of the note in gold.
Paper was less valuable per se than brass, but the notes were rapidly accepted. Initially the notes were handwritten on Bank of England paper and made out for the exact sum deposited in the bank. However, after 1696 it was decided not to issue any notes for sums of less than £50. In 1759 a £10 note was issued, and a £5 note in 1793.
Despite ‘runs’ on the Bank of England at various times which drained its bullion reserves, the bank notes survived, have continued to hold the confidence of the public and remain the mainstay of daily commerce for most people.
Cheques, credit cards and internet banking have displaced notes as the method of effecting large financial transactions in the modern world, although recently some people have been returning to gold in the face of financial uncertainty. So while Yorkshiremen may say: ‘where there’s muck there’s brass’, history suggests that brass was only in the halfpenny place compared to gold!
Further reading:
Colgan E. For Want of Good Money. Wordwell Ltd, Bray 2003.
Went AEJ. James II’s Money of Necessity Often Called Gunmoney. Dublin Historical Record 1960;16:16-21.