Page:A century of Birmingham life- or, A chronicle of local events, from 1741 to 1841 (IA centuryofbirming01lang).pdf/28

 From this skill in mechanical labour has come one of the greatest stains on the manufacturing history of the town. The same ingenuity which produced the inimitable dies for medals, was equally capable of producing the dies for base coin; and in the seventeenth and eighteenth century Birmingham was especially noted for this kind of manufacture. So wide spread was her fame in this respect that her name became a synonym for anything which pretended to be what it was not. The literature of the Restoration affords us numerous examples of this unenviable reputation. A good deal of this abuse was due to the part which the inhabitants had taken against the king in the civil war. The Stuarts and the Cavaliers looked upon Birmingham with no friendly feelings, and nothing was bad enough to be said of the town which Prince Rupert had burned. So far as our coining practices were concerned there was little cause for respectful consideration. They produced too much trouble to the local authorities, and were too injurious to the state, either for excuse or defence. We certainly deserved all we got of infamous notoriety as the manufacturers of base counterfeit coin. }} [Author:John Dryden|Dryden]], in his address to the Reader, in the first part of Absalom and Achitophel, says, "The longest chapter in Deuteronomy has not curses enough for an anti-Bromingham." In Sir Walter Scott's note to this passage we read that "Birmingham was already noted for base and counterfeit coin. In a on their Royal Highnesses, congratulating their return from Scotland, 1682, mention is thus made of Shaftesbury's medal:—

""The wretch that stamped it got immortal fame; "Twas coined by stealth, like groats at Birmingham."

Tom Brown also alluded to the same practice; in his Reasons for Mr. Bayes' (Dryden) changing his Religion, 'I coined heroes as fast as Birmingham groats.' The affected zeal of the country party for the protestant religion led them to be called Birmingham Protestants, while the pretensions of Monmouth to legitimacy led his adversaries to compare him to a spurious impression of the king's coin; and thus