Coins, Tokens and Historical Medals

17th Century Tokens, England, BRITISH TOKENS, 17th Century Tokens, England, probably YORKSHIRE, Sarah Thomas, Halfpenny, 2.02g/12h (Boon 129a; N –; D Wales 91B). Flan bent, excavated, fair, very rare £100-200

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, Tokens from the Late David Griffiths Collection.

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Provenance: Found at Blyth, Nottinghamshire; DNW Auction T4, 13 December 2006, lot 1247.

This token was first given to Wales by the late Peter Seaby, whose suggestion was followed by George Boon. The latter’s reasoning probably centred on three factors: the surname Thomas, common in Wales; the god save the king legend, a Royalist sentiment expressed on some other tokens from Monmouthshire; and that an example was in the D.W. Dykes collection, now preserved in the National Museum of Wales. However, correspondence between Boon and the late Mr Griffiths in August 1979 makes it clear that Boon was unhappy at the original attribution to Wales by Seaby in 1965 and that he would, on reflection, delete the piece if a full reprint of his 1973 Welsh catalogue was ever undertaken. In more recent times at least one other specimen has been found in the Nottinghamshire/Yorkshire vicinity and in all probability the token belongs to Yorkshire. A Sarah Thomas has been located in those parts of the hearth tax records published by the Ripon Historical Society as resident in Halifax in 1672