Post Your United Kingdom (Great Britain) Coin Acquisitions.

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A "Glastonbury Music Society" penny. Any information about this token is appreciated.

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Got a token from CCF member Daltonista in the mail today. A "Glastonbury Music Society" penny.

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A GLASTONBURY PENNY OF 1812 DESCRIBED AS "A BALTIMORE PENNY" OF 1628.

In October of 1883, reference was made in this Journal to an evidently erroneous article in the September number of the Magazine of American History. In this article, entitled "A Baltimore Penny," Mr. H. W. Richardson thus commences the description of a coin, which he attributed to Newfoundland as early as 1628. []
After some remarks on the coinage of James I and his successors, and an elaborate description of the coin under discussion, Mr. Richardson enters into the history of Lord Baltimore's attempted settlement of Newfoundland, concluding his seventeen-page article with the following paragraph. []
When my attention was called to this article, I hunted out from among my unclassified coins one answering to the description ; and although it proved to be of recent coinage, I assigned it a place among the Newfoundland coins and catalogued it as such in the July number of the Journal, thinking that it was possibly the issue of a religious Order or Society in the city of St. John's. Not having been satisfied with this classification, I made further search, and in one "of the ordinary books on coins," "Batty's Catalogue of the Copper Coinage of Great Britain," etc., page 30, found the penny thus describe. []
Here then we find it occupying its proper place as a representative of the town of Glastonbury, forming one of the series generally classified as the " English Tradesmen's Tokens of the Nineteenth Century." Although the innumerable tokens that were issued towards the close of the eighteenth century were called in, and all further issue prohibited, the dearth of copper change in 1810 called for something more than the government seemed willing to accord. Great quantities of penny tokens were struck and circulated in all the principal cities and towns in Great Britain during the three years that followed. This gives the probable date of our token as 1812, and the place of mintage Birmingham. I have been told that the engraver was Thomas Wyon, but it seems improbable, as it is by no means the finest of the nineteenth century tokens, which are inferior as a class in design and execution to those of the eighteenth century.
Glastonbury is a town of about thirty-seven hundred inhabitants, built on a peninsula formed by the windings of the River Brue. It is nearly in the centre of Somersetshire. This peninsula was called by the ancient Britons Ynys yr Avallon, that is, the Island of Apples. In Latin it was written Avalonia, hence the inscription " Pro patria et Avalonia." The town is celebrated for the ruins of the Abbey, once the most celebrated in England. The first church, according to the legends of the monks, was founded by Joseph of Arimathea. In the eighth century, Ina, King of the West Saxons, built and endowed the monastery of Glastonbury. After many vicissitudes it became a flourishing Abbey, and continued to prosper until the destruction of the monasteries in the reign of Henry VIII. * The Spina Sanctus (Latin ungrammatical) refers to the sacred thorn, said to have been brought to Glastonbury and planted by Joseph of Arimathea. This thorn, which was said to blossom constantly on Christmas-day, was an object of great interest to the pilgrims until its destruction during the progress of the Reformation. Here also was the shrine of St. Dunstan and the tomb of King Arthur. The beautiful ruins of the superb Abbey, which it is said once covered sixty acres, are still an attraction.
Turning again to the penny, although not dated, it has all the characteristics of nineteenth century workmanship, but nothing whatever in common with coins struck towards the beginning of the seventeenth century. Copper coins were then small and thin, and none were of a denomination higher than a farthing. There was a strong prejudice against the use of copper, and the full equivalent of value was not attempted to be given until the reign of Charles II.
From these facts we can safely deduce that the Avalon penny was not struck for Newfoundland in 1628, but for Glastonbury in 1812. Had therefore Mr. Richardson acquired as a collector some slight practical knowledge of the English coinages of the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, he could not have mistaken the date of a Glastonbury penny by two hundred years and the location by fifteen hundred miles.

R.W. McLachLan