COIN PEDIGREES REVISITED: THE OXFORD CROWN – HUGH PAGAN

A note in vol.17 of the Numismatic Chronicle by John Brodribb Bergne (1800-1873), in which Bergne lists, together with their back histories,  the ten or eleven specimens known to him of the famous Oxford crown of 1644, with a view of the city of Oxford under the horse on the obverse, turns out to contain similar information to that in an earlier list of the same character contained in a letter dated 20 December 1805 written by the banker and coin collector Thomas Dimsdale (1758-1823). Dimsdale’s list is one of the earliest to list  coin by coin, together with their back histories, examples of a rarity in the early modern series, and is as such of some significance in the history of the methodology of British numismatics.