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Auction: 25021 - The Simpson Collection of Hiberno-Norse and Irish Coinage
Lot: 299

Ireland, CO. ANTRIM, Ballymena, James Adair, Twopence, 1736, I MAKE GOOD SPEED, hare facing right, 2 P below, rev. nine line inscription, edge plain, 8.24g, 12h (D.3; Seaby TD1), largely smoothed and with some pitting, fair to fine, very rare

Provenance

The John Noel Simpson Collection of English, Irish and Hiberno-Norse Coins



'Similar uncertainly exists over James Adair of Ballymena. This is a common surname in the area, but no trace has been found of a James of even approximately the right date there. There is, however, plenty of information about James Adair in Belfast, who was leasing property extensively in the late 1740s, sometimes in association with substantial players in the commercial life of the town. James Adair appears in a list of linen drapers in a 1758 Belfast News Letter. If this is our man, then he was also a partner in the first Belfast Bank, founded with two other prominent Belfast merchants in 1751. The bank was wound up, solvent, in 1757, perhaps because of legislation passed by the Dublin parliament which forbade an individual to act as both banker and merchant. Its prospectus states that the usefulness of the bank 'must principally depend on the circulation of notes'. Even more revealing is the statement that 'To accommodate dealers in linen cloth and yarn the Bank issues small notes, Twenty shillings in value, and from time to time collects silver and half guineas so as to be able to give linen buyers £5 of specie of every English bill of £100; so that they will have proper money to transact their business at markets without being compelled to give a premium for silver, a tax on linen buyers for many years. And as the people of the north are not used to a paper currency, they are informed that three-fourths of the money current in the west of Scotland is in small notes'. That the offer of only 5% in cash was worth advertising indicates how difficult things must have been.' ((Heslip, BNJ 1992, pp.172-173)

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Sold for
£250

Starting price
£70