Great Britain, Society for the Conversion of Negroe Slaves, 1793, a red wax impression of a medal or seal of the society, 54mm. Broken, otherwise very fine, rare £40-£50

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, Coins, Tokens and Medals of the West Indies from the Isaac Rudman Collection.

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Collection

Glendining Auction, 21 March 1990, lot 300 (part); E. Roehrs Collection, DNW Auction M11, 13 July 2011, lot 1689 (part)

The Conversion Society originated in a bequest by Robert Boyle in 1691 for advancing religion amongst ‘infidels’, and until the American War of Independence it was funded from the rents of an estate at Brafferton, Yorkshire, by way of William and Mary College, Virginia. In 1794 the charity was reconstituted as ‘The Society for the Conversion and Religious Instruction and Education of the Negro Slaves in the British West-India Islands’ and in 1836, after the abolition of slavery, as ‘The Society for Advancing the Christian Faith in the British West-India Islands, and elsewhere, in the Dioceses of Jamaica, and of the Barbadoes and the Leeward Islands, and in the Mauritius’.