The numismatic chronicle and journal of the Royal Numismatic Society

NUMISMATIC SOCIETY. 25
was very great at Cambridge and in theeastern' counties. He
belonged to a type of student of whom but few are left. May
more arise to follow bis example !
Mr. John Toplis, of Nottingham, was another enthusiastic collector
of coins whose loss we this year have to lament. He
was for many years connected with the Corporation of Notting-
ham, holding the post of chief clerk in the Estates department.
He was an avid collector of everything connected with the
history of his native county, having a good
and extensive
library replete with books of local interest, and a large and un-
rivalled collection of Nottinghamshire tokens, which he has
bequeathed to the Museum in Nottingham Castle, in the forma-
tion of which he took great interest.
His communications to this Society principally related to
local discoveries, and his account of coins of Stephen and others
found at Nottingham in 1880 brought into greater prominence
the remarkable coins struck from the defaced dies of Stephen,
to which attention had .been previously called by Archdeacon
Pownall in 1862. A coin of Matilda and of " Wereric " were
present in the hoard. An account of coins of Henry HI found
at Newark in 1881 was also given us by Mr. Toplis, and was
especially interesting on account of the earthenware vessel in
which they were deposited having been preserved. Another
of his papers in 1884 contained a list of thirty-eight unpublished
Nottinghamshire seventeenth-century tokens.
Mr. Toplis was a highly popular man among his townsmen,
an active freemason, and for many years a sergeant in the Robin
Hood rifles. His death took place in January last at the comparatively
early age of forty-nine. He had been a member of
this Society since 1880.
Mr. Thomas William Usherwood Robinson was elected a
member of this Society in 1864, and was personally well known
to many of us. Though he never, so far as I am aware, com-
municated any paper to OUT Proceedings, he was a most diligent
antiquary and collector, and besides archaeological and literary
d