Lot 74
London, Holborn, Thomas Spence (publisher, token issuer and radical!) Halfpenny advertising his ‘Glorious Plan…
British 18th and 19th Century Tokens | C25004
Auction: 1 October 2025 at 10:00 BST
Description
London, Holborn, Thomas Spence (publisher, token issuer and radical!) Halfpenny advertising his ‘Glorious Plan’, 1775 within star, rev. olive branch, scales and cornucopia, edge rounded plain edge, 27.5mm/7.7gm. (DH 676), Extremely Fine toned, scarce.
Thomas Spence moved to Holborn from Newcastle in 1792 where he set up a bookshop in at 9, Little Turnstile Lane in 1794 called the ‘Hive of Liberty’. He was a radical and became an active member of the Corresponding Society which agitated for ‘democratic reform’ of the British Parliament. Prime-minister Pitt saw it as an instrument of French revolutionary subversion, and members of the group were arrested and Spence, although never found guilty of sedition, spent three short sojourns in Newgate Gaol! Spence recognised the propaganda potential of the circulating coin and had made a great number of tokens, representing his social and political philosophy, which he sold at his shop. He produced a great variety of tokens and they could be ordered, struck from any combination of dies - it is recorded that visitors to his shop reported seeing thousands of tokens lying around in heaps! In 1796/7, on the brink of bankruptcy and only after a couple of years or so of selling these political tokens, he sold the dies to John Skidmore who then continued to produce yet further mulings of the series.
