The Collection of 18th Century Tokens formed by Dr David L Spence

Hackney, Joseph Priestley, Lutwyche’s gilt Proof mule Halfpenny, bust right, rev. bust of Earl Stanhope left, edge york built a.m. 1223· cathedral rebuilt a.d. 1075, 13.10g/12h (DH Warwickshire 221 bis III). Die flaw running through upper obverse legend and several minor surface nicks, otherwise good very fine and retaining original brilliance, of the highest rarity, perhaps only one other specimen known (£300-400)

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Collection of 18th Century Tokens formed by Dr David L Spence.

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Provenance:
Dr R.J. Hudson Collection [from Seaby 1963].

Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), dissenting minister and theologian, married Mary (†1794), daughter of the ironmaster John Wilkinson, in 1762. His interest in the burgeoning sciences of the time led him to an introduction to Benjamin Franklin in 1766, who encouraged Priestley to write his History of Electricity. In the early 1770s he isolated dephlogisticated air (what we know as oxygen). In 1780 he moved to Fairhill, Birmingham and joined the Lunar Society, a body of gifted individuals including Boulton, Watt, Wedgwood, Herschell, Franklin and Wilkinson, his father-in-law. However, his radical views and membership of the Constitutional Society of Birmingham, whose members advocated the principles of the French Revolution, led indirectly to the Birmingham riots of July 1791 when a crowd of reactionaries from the rival King and Country Society sacked the homes of Constitutional members, destroying virtually all of Priestley’s life’s work. For his own safety he left Birmingham and took a preaching post at the Gravel Pit chapel, Hackney, in December 1791, but in April 1794 he and his wife emigrated to the USA, where they settled at Northumberland, Pennsylvania and Priestley became a confidante of Thomas Jefferson. See also lots 1777 and 1779