Auction Catalogue

15 & 16 March 2017

Starting at 10:00 AM

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Coins, Tokens and Historical Medals

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Lot

№ 1027

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16 March 2017

Hammer Price:
£240

BRITISH HISTORICAL MEDALS, National Edition of Shakespeare’s Works, 1803, a silver Subscriber’s medal by C.H. Küchler for J. and J. Boydell, Shakespeare seated on rock, flanked by figures of Drama and Painting, rev. legend and date in sixteen lines, edge named (Samuel Whitbread Esqr), 48mm (Pollard 28; BHM 553; E 950). Trifling rim nicks on obverse, otherwise about extremely fine, to a notable recipient; in original metal shells £100-200

Samuel Whitbread (1764-1815), son of the brewer Samuel Whitbread; b Cardington, Bedfordshire; educ. Eton, Christ Church Oxford and St John’s Cambridge; MP for Bedford 1790-1813. A reformer and champion of civil rights and the abolition of slavery, Whitbread was a close friend of Charles James Fox and on Fox’s death in 1805 assumed leadership of the Whig party. Whitbread was a closet supporter of Napoleon and was personally devastated when Napoleon abdicated in 1814. Buoyed by the subsequent 100 Days revolution, then crushed by the French defeat at the Battle of Waterloo, Whitbread committed suicide by cutting his own throat on the morning of 6 July 1815