We stumbled across one of those fine references from ages past which dealt with the subject of goldsmiths and their crafts. The woman who sold me the book insisted that it was rare because it was one of the few which dealt with gold workers. Clearly she hadn’t read the book and knew nothing about its subject but such is the bane of the sales world.
The book in question is English Goldsmiths and their Marks by Charles James Jackson published c. 1922 which compiled a large number of goldsmiths, their marks, and locations of practice. One point Jackson makes clear at the outset is that in English usage, goldsmith may refer to someone working on gold, silver, or both which exposed the ignorance of Ms Know-it-all.
The author further traces the evolution of legislation and craftsmanship which characterized these trades over the centuries, the chief goal of which was to protect the citizens from the unscrupulous practices of goldsmiths and silversmiths who would degrade their goods with more alloy than they stated.
The issue came to a head in 1238 when Henry III ordered the constitution of a guild of 6 goldsmiths to oversee the craft. Under Edward I in 1300 references appear referring to the use of the leopard’s head as the royal mark of assay.
Legislation required that gold and silver be assayed prior to it leaving smiths’ hands. In 1327 guild was incorporated under royal charter as the Wardens and Commonality of the Mystery of Goldsmiths of the City of London. In 1462 Edward IV granted it perpetual succession with numerous rights and privileges.
Jackson spend a few paragraphs describing the benefits and demerits of gold vs silver related to malleability, ductility and weight.
In 1526 royal decree adopted the Troy standard imported from Troyes France a century earlier whereby 12 troy ounces make a troy pound.
Considerable attention is given to legislation attempting stamp out precious metals fraud where, for example, anyone leaving England must do so at Dover so that he could searched for gold or silver as it was illegal to take it out of the country or to import it, the latter owing chiefly to the unsupervised quality of foreign metals. Edward I prohibited the importation of foreign money in 1292.
In 1363 the sterling standard was adopted.
Lest anyone think that the laws actually protected anyone, such disabuse of such fantasies were reported by Jackson when he noted the extreme currency debasement under Henry VIII and Edward VI which was so bad that a pound contained only 3 ounces of silver. So Henry not only adultered his marriage, but also the currency.
In 1551 the standard were restored, and in 1576 Elizabeth I issued considerable legislation attempting to remediate the fraud perpetrated by the government and the goldsmith guild itself.
All Jackson’s treatment of these subjects is more coherent and complete than these cherry picked snippets, your author by and large found it all rather interesting. But the history lesson was an aside, in some ways, to the main contents of the book which was an enumeration of goldsmiths and their marks throughout England, and the United Kingdom.
This book was brought to your attention as another aid in the identification of silver, remembering that goldsmith is a term suitable for silversmith in the British isles.
