Hall marks on gold & silver plate

WEIGHTS. 127
duced groats, half-groats, pennies, half-pennies, and farthings, as
well as the gold noble passing at 6s. 8d., its half and quarter. The
first sovereign or double rial, coined by Henry VII, passed for
22s. 6d. Then succeeded, in the time of the Stuarts, the unit or
pound sovereign of twenty shillings.
There was a method of paying and receiving moneys so as to
avoid the necessity of counting and weighing each piece separately,
thereby avoiding the loss of time necessarily occupied in dealing
with large sums of money. This was termed "
payments ad sealant"
and would be completely answered by the plan, provided the coins
were of just weight and undiminished in the course of currency,
each being weighed separately on recei-pt, as at the Bank of England,
where the practice is still in use. In faying large sums in gold
the first thousand is counted and placed in one of the scales, the
additional thousands being estimated by weighing them successively
in the other scale against it. This is sometimes adopted at banking
houses in the present day. In a general way the gold coins are
taken indiscriminately from the mass, but instances are recorded
by which deception has in former times been practised. A certain
monk of St. Augustine's in Canterbury, in the fourteenth century,
contrived to defraud those who made payments to that abbey, of
whose rents he was the receiver, by taking advantage of the unequal
manner in which coins were then formed, selecting the heaviest,
against which he weighed all the money he received, gaining thereby
sometimes five shillings and never less than three shillings and fourpence
in every twenty shillings. On discovery of the fraud, however,
the abbot and convent were severely fined.
Troy weights are now exclusively used in the gold and silver
trade, the weights being stated in ounces, and until recently in
pennyweights and grains. The troy pound is not used; the troy
ounce being the present unit of weight, which in 1879 was divided
into decimals.
Silver plate is always sold at per ounce.
The old series of cup weights or nest set of ounce weights, established
in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, are still in use in the City of
London, for which there is no standard above 12 ounces, and they
are usually made of brass.
The Founders' Company claim the right to stamp and verify
brass weights after they are made, but they have no power to enforce
it. The right is based on a Royal Charter of James II, and a clause
in the Weights and Measures Act reserves such, which, however, has
frequently been disputed, but no legal decision has been taken
upon it.
Troy weights marked by the Founders' Company
should be
stamped at Goldsmiths' <strong>Hall</strong>, but it is not done now. The legal
provisions for stamping troy weights are practically inoperative.
A set of old troy standards still exists at Goldsmiths' <strong>Hall</strong>.
The standard brass weight of one pound troy made in the year
1758 is now in the custody of the Clerk of the House of Commons,
and is by 5 Geo. IV, c. 74, the established standard, and called
10