Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/619

Rh The Privy Council offered a reward of £300 for the discovery of the author of the Drapier's Letters."

The king then ordered the proposed issue to be reduced to £40,000, but this did not assuage the excitement in the least, and it finally became necessary, in order to restore peace, to buy back the royal license from Mr. Wood, by the payment to him of a pension of £3,000 a year for fourteen years.

This failure did not, apparently, kill the project for coining money for the American colonies, and the many pieces actually struck for that purpose are creditable specimens of the art at that period. On the obverse appears the head of the king and on the reverse a full-blown rose, with the legend "Rosa Americana," and the date "1722." On the later issues the head of George II appears, and the date 1733.

There is preserved in the Massachusetts archives a letter of instructions, dated October 29, 1725, from the Duke of New Castle to the Governor of Massachusetts, saying:

"Sir, His Majesty having been pleased to grant to Mr. Wood his letters patent for the coining of two pence and half pence pieces of the value of money of Great Britain for His Majesty's dominions in America, which said coin is to receive such additional value as shall be reasonable and agreeable according to the customary allowance of exchange in the several parts of His Majesty's dominions, as you will see more at large by the patent which will be laid before you by the person that delivers this letter to you, I am to signify to you His Majesty's pleasure that in pursuance of a clause in said patent by which all His Majesty's officers are to be aiding and assisting Mr. Wood in the due execution of what is therein directed and in the legal exercise of the several powers and enjoyment of the privileges and advantages thereby graunted to him, you are to give him all due encouragement and assistance, and that you and all such other of His Majesty's officers there, whom it may concern, do readily perform ail legal acts that may be requisite for that purpose. This I am particularly to recommend to your care, and to desire your protection to Mr. Wood and to those whom he shall employ to transact this affair in the Provinces under your government.

If we may rely upon the statement of an English writer of the day, Mr. Wood's coin did not meet with a very cordial reception in America, for the pamphlet says:

"Wood obtained a patent for coining small money for the English plantations in America, in which he had the conscience to make thirteen shillings out of one pound of brass; this money they rejected in a manner not so decent as that of Ireland."

In the year 1830 Mr. Templeton Reid, of Georgia, established a private mint, at which he coined $10, $5, and $2.50 gold pieces;