W. C a r e w H a z l i t t Coinage of the European Continent

Descriptive O^ltline of the Coinages of Europe 351
except a billon sol of 1552, of which there is a pattern in
gold (Townshend Collection, p. 632), of Michael, Count and
Prince of Gruyere from 1539 to 1554. This piece reads
Mychael Prin Et Co : Grver
It may be mentioned that the canton and city of
Miihlhausen, although
1 5 15, and a free city since 1422,
received into the Swiss Union in
is not known to have
struck money otherwise than between 1622 and 1625, in
pursuance of the contract with two moneyers, Weitnauer
and Falkner, who engaged to observe the Basle standard.
The Townshend collection has only two examples of the
mint: a gulden and double gulden of 1623, both with
Moneta Nova Milhvsina
The names of many of the mint-masters and engravers
have been preserved, and may be seen in Mr. Poole's Catalogue.
The rarities in the series are numerous, and setting aside the
Chur episcopal denier of Heinrich von Arbon (1180-93),
the gold dicken of Berne, 1492, the St. Gallen plappart of
1424, the so-called ecu d'or sol of Geneva about 1550, and
a few other nuggets, we may perhaps not be far from the
truth in affirming that the early money generally, but
especially the gold, and the whole coinage down to the last
century in a high state of preservation, offer almost insurmountable
difficulties to collectors. In the Townshend cabinet
a large percentage
is in indifferent condition, and there are
innumerable lacuna. The collection is not only deficient in
many rarities, but in ordinary pieces of the earlier part of
the present century.
We must not overlook a scarce 24-kreutzer piece struck
for the ephemeral canton of Sarine and Broye, formed out of
Fribourg in February 1789, and reunited to it, 3Oth May in
the same year.