On 16 January 1750, almost exactly 276 years ago, the Reverend William Stukeley wrote to his old friend Maurice Johnson lamenting the gift of the unique Carausius “Oriuna” denarius to King Louis XV of France, as well as a gold aureus of Allectus. The relevant part of the letter is below, reproducing the spelling and punctuation used:
“Dr Mead had 2 gold Allectus’s; more than any body else had. he gave one to the French king. Not content with this indescretion, he sent him an unique silver coyn of Carausius; on the reverse, his wife ORIVNA AUGUSTA, & this without so much as a drawing taken of it.”
Dr Richard Mead was the doctor who attended Queen Anne on her deathbed and was the court physician to King George II until his death in 1754.
I have already posted, in 2022, about the Allectus aureus that was included in the subsequent sale of Mead’s coin collection:
The provenance of an aureus of Allectus in the BM
Is it possible to identify the aureus given to the French king?
Presumably the royal collection is now in the Bibliotheque National in Paris and, assuming it wasn’t previously exchange or sold, it should be found there. Andrew Burnett lists 24 aurei of Allectus in his 1984 BNJ paper. Of those there are four that are identified as being in the Paris collection but only two, coins 3 and 19 have recorded provenance s that could potentially fit. Both have the reverse of SPES AVG and are the only recorded Allectus aurei with this reverse.
This is where we now have a problem as both of these coins were stolen in the 1831 robbery and are now lost.
We do, however, have a record of both coins in the Monumenta Historica Britannia by Petrie (1848) where they were represented from previous engravings on the plates. These are also reproduced by Burnett an his plate of Allectan aurei.
Checking Sam Moorhead's recent revision of RIC for Carausius and Allectus draws a blank on which of the two coins it might be the gifted coin to the French king by Mead. Similarly Shiel, Webb and Cohen, although acknowledging the existence of these coins, all fail to identify the Mead provenance of one of them.
Although we can be sure of the reverse type, Spes, it is not possible for me to distinguish which of the two coins was Mead's. The loss of both known types of SPES AVG aureus of Allectus is a pity and does, indeed, stem from Mead's indiscretion.
