58 
Elizabeth, that on a list of them being read out in Parliament 
a member exclaimed, Is not bread among them?” Never¬ 
theless, when the farthing coinage was determined upon, a 
patent was granted to Lord Harrington, and after some 
bargaining between him and the king about the share of the 
profit, which was calculated at £25,000, in May, 1613, the 
farthings were issued, the use of all private tokens being 
prohibited. The description of the coin in the proclamation 
corresponds with the device and legend as they appear, though 
much worn, on this specimen. The farthings got the cant name 
of Harringtons, from the patentee. The author of that odd 
work Drunken Barnaby’s Journey,” describes himself as 
arriving in the course of his northern expedition at Harrington, 
in Northamptonshire, and giving a farthing to a beggar in 
honour of the name :— 
Veni Harrington, bonum omen, 
Vere amans illud nomen, 
Harringtoni dedi nummum, 
Et fortunae pene summum, 
Indigent! postulanti, 
Benedictionem danti. 
These tokens were refused in some of the counties, and 
frauds having been practised in regard to them they ceased to 
be issued in the reign of Charles I. But the inconvenience was 
so great that about 1648, overseers of the poor, town corpora- 
ations, and private tradesmen began to issue their copper 
tokens, whose number increased so much that they have formed 
a distinct branch of numismatics. 
Lord Harrington, whose title has no connection with the 
family of Stanhope which now bears it, was a favourite of 
James I. He was raised to the peerage in the first year of his 
reign. The Princess Elizabeth, the only survivor of James’s 
four daughters, had been committed to his charge on the King’s 
coming to England. He had a seat near Dunchurch, in 
Warwickshire, where she was residing at the time of the 
gunpowder plot, and it was part of the conspirators’ plan that, 
on the explosion taking place, three of them should proceed to 
Dunchurch, and from thence to Lord Harrington’s house, and 
