Medal proclaiming the legitimacy of Prince Charles and the Jacobite Succession
Category
Coins and medals
Date
1749
Materials
Copper
Measurements
305 mm (Diameter)
Place of origin
Scotland
Order this imageCollection
Osterley Park and House, London
NT 773292.2
Summary
Copper, medal proclaiming the legitimacy of Prince Charles Edward Stuart (1720-1788) and the Jacobite Succession, possibly struck in Scotland, 1749. A struck copper medal from 1749, proclaiming the legitimacy of the Jacobite Succession. On the obverse is the standing figure of a Highlander, with a claymore in his raised right hand and a shield on his left arm. On the shield is an inscription which translates as ‘Who can contend with me?’. The Latin legend translates as ‘I will leave no stone unmoved to obtain that’ and, at top, the date 1749. On the reverse is an expanded rose, with the inscription ‘My affairs are at issue’. The medal is heavily worn on the obverse.
Full description
The medal is intended to assert the legitimacy of the Jacobite cause and the continuing rightful claim of Prince Charles Edward Stuart (1720-1788) to take the throne of the United Kingdom on behalf of his father Prince James Edwards Stuart, if necessary by force, following the disaster of the Battle of Culloden and its aftermath in 1646. A vigorous but rather crude production, the small propagandistic medal is an exercise in bravado, with the Young Pretender symbolised in the figure of the Highlander defiantly waving his sword at the Hanoverian English. The flower on the reverse is the white rose, or cockade, the young prince’s badge, thus an easily recognisable emblem of his cause. The sentiment of the medal is paralleled in a contemporary Jacobite song: He wears a broadsword by his side, And weel he kens to draw that; The target and Highland plaid, The shoulder belt, and a’ that. A bonnet bound with ribbons blue, The white cockade, and a’ that; The tartan hose and philibeg, Which makes us blythe, for a’ that.’ The reverse legend, translatable as ‘my affairs are at stake’, is probably taken from a satirical poem by the philosopher and poet Seneca the Younger (4 B.C.- A.D. 65), the Apocolocyntosis, which is a satire on the deification of the Roman emperor Claudius. In Seneca’s satire, the unworthy Claudius is compared to the justly deified Emperor Augustus. The line in the poem is spoken by the god Hercules, who opposes the deification of Claudius and who shortly before has said that his ‘iron’ i.e. weapon, was in the fire. The analogy is therefore that, like Hercules, Prince Charles Edward Stuart has his steel sword ready to be drawn from the fire and brandished, with reference too to the phrase ‘strike whilst the iron is hot.’ These parallels are further echoed in the mottoes on the shield, ‘Who can contend with me?’ and ‘I will leave no stone unmoved to obtain that’. The emperor Claudius is to be equated with George II, and the great god-emperor Augustus with the Old Pretender Prince James (James III/VIII to his Jacobite supporters). Jeremy Warren 2019
Provenance
Acquired by George Child Villiers, 9th Earl of Jersey (1910-1998) in 1988. Given to the National Trust in 1993.
Marks and inscriptions
Obverse, legend: NULLUM NON MOVEBO LAPIDEM UT ILLUD ADIPISCAR 1749 Obverse, on shield: QUIS CONTENDAT MECUM Reverse, legend : MEA . RES . AGITUR.
References
Cochran-Patrick 1884: Robert William Cochran-Patrick, Medals of Scotland from the earliest period to the present time, Edinburgh 1884, p. 73, no. 59, Pl. XIV, Fig. 3. Hawkins, Franks and Grueber 1885: Edward Hawkins, Augustus W. Franks and Herbert A. Grueber (eds.), Medallic Illustrations of the History of Great Britain and Ireland to the death of George II, 2 vols., London 1885, vol. II, p. 655, no. 358. Woolf 1988: Noel Woolf, The Medallic Record of the Jacobite Movement, London 1988, p. 114, no. 61:1. Mitchiner 1988-2007: Michael Mitchiner, Jetons, Medalets and Tokens, 4 vols., London 1988-2007, vol. III (British Isles circa 1588 to 1830), 1998, p. 1740, no. 88.2b (5106). Guthrie 2006: Neil Guthrie, ‘Some Latin Inscriptions on Jacobite Medals’, The Medal, 48 (2006), pp. 23-32, pp. 28-29, fig. 7. Eimer 2010: Christopher Eimer, British Commemorative Medals and their Values, London 2010, p. 100, no. 624, pl. 70. Guthrie 2013: Neil Guthrie, The Material Culture of the Jacobites, Cambridge 2013, pp. 93-96.