14 Trial of the Pyx. 



" Certain members of the Privy Council, who constitute the 

 Court, with the Lord Chancellor for president ; the Comptroller 

 General and other officers of the Exchequer, the Serjeant-at- 

 Arms attending the Great Seal, the Queen's Remembrancer 

 and his officers, the Master of the Mint, the Queen's Assay- 

 Master, and other officers of the Mint, the jury, freemen of the 

 Goldsmiths' Company, including in their number their Assay 

 Master, together with the Clerk of the Goldsmiths' Company 

 and their attendants." A goodly array of authorities, and no 

 doubt the Serjeant-at-Arms attends with a view to the capture 

 of the Master of the Mint, who is also on his trial, should the 

 jury find an adverse verdict, and declare that the Pyx coins 

 are below legal standard. 



The oath is next administered, and it is as follows : i( You 

 shall well and truly, after your knowledge and discretion, make 

 the assays of these coins of gold and silver, and truly report 

 if the said monies be in weight and fineness according to the 

 Queen's standard in her Treasury for coins ; and also if the 

 same monies be sufficient in alloy, and according to the cove- 

 nants comprised in an indenture thereof bearing date the 6th 

 February, 1817, and made between His Majesty King George 

 III., of the one part, and the Right Hon. William. Well esley 

 Pole, of the other part. So help you God." After the 

 foreman of the jury has duly taken this oath, and " kissed the 

 book," it is administered to his fellows in batches of three or 

 four at a time. Then the work of examination is really about 

 to commence, and the jury return to Goldsmiths' Hall, having 

 in their custody the portions of the gold and silver plates 

 before named. The Pyx-boxes of the Mint have already 

 reached that place, and the first work of the jurors is to count 

 out and weigh their contents. They then select from the 

 whole mass of coin a certain number of pieces of each deno- 

 mination, and melt them in the ordinary way into ingots of 

 gold and silver. From the corner of each ingot a small piece 

 is cut off, and then the ingots .themselves are flattened by 

 hammering and lamination into straps or bands of about -^ of 

 an inch in thickness. From the straps pieces are punched 

 and weighed with the closest accuracy. The cuttings are put 

 into paper envelopes, upon which their respective weights are 

 noted to the one-thousandth part of a grain. Then follows the 

 assay, which is effected by " cupellation."* Other jurors 

 busy themselves with the test plate slips and cuttings, and 

 effect their assay by precisely analogous means. Finally, 

 reports are made by the two sets of operators — the proceedings 



* Ciqoellation is the art of refining gold pr silver by means of a cupel, which 

 is a small vessel that absorbs metallic bodies when changed by heat into fluid. 

 The operation is explained at length in all encyclopaedias of science. 



