NOTES ON CIVIL-WAR COINS. 61 



that the half-crown was a convenient coin for the payment 

 of the King's troops. I should add that the irregular 

 shape of several of the examples on the plate is largely due to 

 dishonest clipping or filing after the coins had left the mint. 

 Nevertheless there was no apparatus then in general use 

 for producing an accurately circular coin, as Nicholas Briot's 

 system, which yielded the finest work of the Caroline period, 

 had not penetrated to the West of England. 



Where in Weymouth was the most suitable place for the 

 establishment of a mint, small though it may have been ? 

 Melcombe may be ruled out in this connexion, I think, as that 

 portion of the town was less defensible, and there are no letters 

 on the coins which would indicate the name of the district 

 on the north side of the harbour. The usual practice was to 

 set up the apparatus in the strongest available building, 

 in a castle if such a stronghold existed. The parish church of 

 Weymouth, standing on the ridge overlooking the harbour 

 and Melcombe, had been converted by the Parliamentary 

 garrison into a citadel known as the Chapel Fort, and during 

 the ten months of the Royalist occupation this fort was the 

 centre also of their defence. The circumstances seem, 

 therefore, to point to this citadel as the scene of the coining 

 operations ; but the close proximity of the two fortified 

 positions, Sandsfoot and Chapel Fort, negatives the pro- 

 bability that there were two separate mints working at the 

 same time. The more reasonable theory would be that the 

 military situation, or some other pressing cause, required the 

 withdrawal of the workmen from the site first chosen. Hence 

 the use of both SA. and W. on their handiwork. 



The whole matter may be briefly summed up by saying 

 that so long as the Weymouth coins hold their present position 

 in the eyes of those best able to form an opinion, I believe 

 that the SA. half-crowns will be rightly attributed to Sands- 

 foot Castle. The two groups stand or fall together. 



After the surrender of Weymouth and Sandsfoot in June, 

 1644, Colonel William Ashburnham, the governor, retired to 

 Portland Castle, some two miles distant across the roadstead, 



