HISTORY OF HARTING. 8? 



there only to hear Sir Edward Ford's proposal about 

 farthings ; wherein, oh to see almost everybody in- 

 terested for him ; only my Lord Anglesey, who is a 

 grave serious man. My Lord Barkeley was there, but 

 is the most hot fiery man in discourse without any 

 cause that ever I saw, even to breach of civility to my 

 Lord Anglesey in his discourse opposing to my Lord's. 

 At last, though without much satisfaction to me, it 

 was voted that it should be requested of the king that 

 Sir Edward Ford's proposal is the best yet made." It 

 is curious that the chief parties in this quaint scene 

 were, with the exception of Lord Anglesey, all more 

 or less connected afterwards with the Ford or Caryll 

 families : Lord Barkeley, as we shall see, married his 

 eldest daughter to Sir Edward Ford's grandson, and 

 Lord I&ybrooke, the descendant of Pepys himself, 

 sprung'from the Carylls on his mother's side. The 

 invention of Sir Edward Ford's about which so much 

 heat was shown, at a time when Charles the Second's 

 patronage of the Royal Society made such questions 

 fashionable, was a new way of making farthings, " by 

 which the inventor made demonstration to the king 

 and council so that they were satisfied that the coins 

 could not be counterfeited, and that one farthing could 

 not be like another, but that they should differ in some 

 little thing." Prince Rupert* is said to have prevented 

 Ford's obtaining a patent for England, but one was 

 granted him for Ireland, whither he went and died in 

 1670, before his plan could be established, f 



Had Sir Edward Ford not been absent in Ireland at 

 the time of the Plague and the re-building of London 

 after the Great Fire, + it is probable that his name, 



Prince Rupert himself invented mezzo-tinto, " and from him 

 is named that curious bubble of glass which has long amused 

 children and puzzled philosophers." Macaulay, Book I, Hi., 

 p. 406. 



f Wood, quoted by Dalloway. 



Harting Church contributed for the re-building of St. Paul's 



