July 21, 1876.] ■"'^^ [Anthon. 



Silver Louis of Fifteen Sous, struck under Louis XIV., for Circulation in 



French America. 



By Charles E. Anthon, LL.D., 



professor of history and belles-lettres in the college of the 



city of new york. 



{Bead before the American Philosophical Society, July 2\st, 1876.) 



Description— ^WvGV . LVD • XIIII • D • G • [Mint-mark, Sun in splen- 

 dor, the badge of Louis XIV.] FR • ET . NAV • REX • (Louis tlie 14th, 

 by the grace of God, King of France and Navarre.) Bust of Louis XIV., 

 .aureate, to the right, in corselet and mantle ; margin serrated. Rev. 

 GLORIAM . REGNI • | TVI • DICENT • ("They shall speak of the 



glory of thy kingdom, ") 1670. On a crowned shield, Wwee fleurs-de-lis 

 (two and one). Above the crown, a crowned A; beneath the shield, be- 

 tween the dot after REGNI and the dot before TVI, A (for Paris, the place 

 of striking); margin serrated. Size 13, scale of the Philadelphia Numis- 

 matic Society, i. e., thirteen-sixteenths of an inch. Condition, barely cir- 

 culated. 



Although there has existed among us, for the last quarter of a century, 

 a very considerable degree of interest in the subject of our pre-revolution- 

 ary coinage, and although the taste for collecting and studying such speci- 

 mens of it as can be procured has steadily increased, till the majority of 

 the rarer and more remarkable pieces extant have found their way into the 

 cabinets of collectors, to the great enhancement of the price of those which 

 remain in the market, and with a corresponding whetting of the appetite 

 to possess them on the part of antiquarians, it strangely happens that the 

 beautiful coin represented above, demonstrably American, and suggestive 

 of important historical remembrances as it is, has remained neglected and 

 unsought for. No author on American Numismatics seems to have been 

 aware of its existence until the present writer, in Vol. IV., No. 9, for Jan- 

 uary, 1870, of the American Journal of Numismatics, which he then edited, 

 called the attention of its readers to the fact. A brief and unsatisfactory 

 notice of it, not founded, as is confessed, on actual inspection, forthwith 

 appeared in Sandham's "Supplement to Coins," &c., of Canada, Mon- 

 treal, 1872; the main work, published in 1869, being silent on the matter. 

 But Mr. Sylvester S. Crosby, of Boston, who has lately (1873-1875) pro- 

 duced the last and best work on the general subject, entitled, "The Early 



PROC. AMER. PHILOS. SOC. XVI. 98. 2k 



