Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Waterloo 1815 (The Master of the Mint to The Rt. Hon. N. Vansittart) fitted with steel clip and ring suspension, extremely fine and rare £600-800

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Richard Magor Collection of Medals Relating to India and Africa, and other Fine Awards.

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Collection

According to a Minute in the records of the Royal Mint, dated 3rd June 1816, ‘The Master of the Mint has directed Waterloo Medals to be struck in Fine Silver, and to be presented as a Gift by him to the persons undermentioned.’ There followed a list of 37 names, including the Right. Hon. N. Vansittart, in addition to the British Museum and the Governor & Company of the Bank of England, 39 medals in all.

Nicholas Vansittart was born in 1766, and entered Parliament in 1796. He was joint Secretary of the Treasury in 1801-04 and 1806-07, briefly serving as Secretary for Ireland in the intervening year. In 1812 he became Chancellor of the Exchequer under the 2nd Earl of Liverpool. He held this office for the next eleven years, dealing with the problems of economic adjustment that followed the end of the Napoleonic Wars. A loyal follower of Viscount Sidmouth, he resigned in 1823, not long after Sidmouth himself, and was raised to the Peerage in the same year as the 1st Baron Bexley. He remained in the cabinet as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster until 1828, and died in 1851.