42 Dr. Smith on the Irish Coins 0/ Edward the Fourth. 



the Seventh ; and it is not to be supposed that Edward the Fifth coined money 

 in Ireland with a new die, and a new title, who, if he coined any money, 

 used in England his father's dies. 



" If, therefore, we attribute these coins to any of these kings, we must sup- 

 pose, either that one of them, at some uncertain time, for some reason, which we 

 cannot conjecture, assumed this regal title, and afterwards as capriciously relin- 

 quished it ; or that some Mint Master chose to give his sovereign a title which 

 did not belong to him, and to impress it on his coins ; a most improbable act in a 

 Royal Mint Master, and one which a counterfeiter would carefully avoid. 



" But there was another king to whom none of these reasonings apply, who, 

 we have reason to think, coined money in Ireland, and who had a motive for as- 

 suming the title of King of Ireland ; and (in the absence of direct evidence) to 

 suppose that he did take that title, and coined money bearing it, is a less violent 

 supposition than either of those which I have considered. 



" In 1486, Lambert Simnel was received in Dublin with open arms by the 

 Geraldines and the other Irish lords, as the representative of the House of 

 York, which was always popular in Ireland, and ' as the son and lawful inheritor 

 of the good Duke of Clarence, their countryman and protector during his life,'* 

 and was proclaimed king, by the title of Edward the Sixth. Early in May, 

 1487, he was crowned in Christ Church, and 'the Parliament, Courts of Jus- 

 tice, Processes, Statutes, and Acts of the Council, came all out in his name.'f 



" At that time there was a mint in Dublin, J and from the various patterns of 



* Campion's History of Ireland, p. 103, Dub. 1633. 



•j- Ware's Annals of Ireland, pp. 4 — 6, folio, 1705. 



J If Thomas Galmole, alias Thomas Archibold, was Master and Worker of the Money of Silver, 

 in Dublin, in the reigns of Richard the Third and Henry the Seventh, {and it is probable that he 

 was so, for we find him so styled in 1483, (Ruding, vol. ii. p. 376,) and again, in 1506, (Rot. Can. 

 Hib.) it is likely that some of the coins usually given to Henry the Seventh do not belong to the Royal 

 Mint. The artist who could design and execute the Dominus Groat of Richard the Third, could 

 not have perpetrated such barbarisms of spelling as Sivitas and Duxlin, or the barbarities of execution 

 which disgraced these coins. If they belong to this reign they are probably some of the counterfeit 

 money against which Henry the Seventh issued a proclamation in 1492, (Ware.) I may observe, that 

 although more hastily executed, the Rex Groats, in the letters and whole style, appear to my not 

 much-practised eye strongly to resemble the Dominus Groats of Richard the Third. Were they 

 both the workmanship of Thomas Galmole ? 



