“ Quis restringet Pleiadum delicias,” and the invitation to
William of Orange with the abdication and flight of James, his
Queen, and Son. Some of the Dutch medals make allusions
to the supposed illegitimacy of the young Prince, and on
one curious piece Truth is represented opening the door of a
cabinet and exposing to view a Jesuit, perhaps Father Petre,
thrusting through a trap a child with pyx and crown, whose
name is inscribed on the door “ Jacobus Franciscus Edwardus
supposititius.” Throughout these reigns are dispersed many
personal medals which may well be studied for the portraiture
of eminent men of the time.
It is at this period that we first meet with those curious little
medalets called touch-pieces. They were given to such persons
as sought for the cure of scrofula or “ King’s Evil ” by the
touch of the Sovereign. One of these pieces attached to a
piece of white riband was suspended around the neck of the
afflicted person. Before the Restoration the piece used was
the coin called the Angel, but when that ceased to be issued,
a medalet of somewhat similar type was substituted. The
touch-pieces were struck by all the Stuart Sovereigns with the
exception of Mary, the practice of touching being repudiated
by William III., and finally abandoned by George I. The
Elder Pretender and his two sons, Charles and Henry, also
claimed the power, the last striking his pieces with the title of
Henry IX. The piece of Anne in the British Museum is that
which she hung about the neck of Samuel Johnson. These
medalets were at first always- struck in gold; but the necessities
of James and his descendants compelled them to issue them
also in silver.
With the exception of Briot, who had died during the Civil
War, the medallists who excelled during the reign of Charles I.
and the Commonwealth continued to work on after the Restoration.
Rawlins was reinstated in his post as Chief Engraver to
the Mint, and Thomas Simon was transferred to the Office of
Seals, a removal which he bitterly resented, and sought to get
cancelled by executing flattering medals of the King, and many
patterns for coins, amongst which was his masterpiece “ The
Petition-Crown.’ His brother Abraham worked on for a few
years in a desultory manner. From out of the midst of these
artists there sprang up a new set of workmen in the family of the
Roettiers, who, it is said, had been introduced to Charles during
his exile in Holland. This family at first consisted of three
brothers, John, Joseph, and Philip, but it is of the eldest, John,
that we have the most numerous and finest works. The improvements
made by Briot in the machinery for striking coins
and medals, and subsequently by Peter Blondeau, who had been
invited here from France by the Parliament, were destined to
affect very considerably medallic art. Hitherto, as it has been
shown, it had been possible only to strike pieces in low relief
by the means of dies, but Roettier, determined, by the aid of
recent improvements in the machinery, to see what could be
done in the case of larger pieces. The success of his attempt
cannot be better realized than in examining such pieces as the
Restoration medal of Charles, having on the reverse the various
divinities assembled round Britannia and bearing the inscription
“ Felicitas Britannise ” (Yol. I. p. 460), and the medal
commemorating the Duke of York’s victories over the Dutch in
1665 (Yol. I. p. 504). Whatever ill effects this process may
since have produced in medallic art, these works are certainly
masterpieces of engraving. The portraits, though in low relief,
are most effective, and the reverses have a picturesqueness
something akin to the works of the Italian artists of the previous
century. There are scarcely any works in the English series
which can be attributed to the brothers of John Roettier,
who both left England after a few years to get employment
at foreign mints. The only other medallist of this period
whose works need be noticed is George Bower or Bowers. He
executed nearly all the medals relating to the murder of Godfrey,
and some on the Restoration. The style of his work is after
that of the Roettiers, but not of such good execution and
finish.
The medallic history of the reigns of William and Mary, and
of Anne, is almost as much that of the other chief States of
Europe as of England. The medals of this time are by far
the most numerous, and historically the most complete, of the
English series. To give a full list of the events which they