(1766) William Pitt Medal. Betts-516, Dies 1-A (Kraljevich 1), modified. Copper. MS-60.

40.2 mm. 344.3 grains. 2.2-2.3 mm thick. Smooth medium brown with some blue toning on the reverse. A truly unique example, modified sometime close to its era of striking by smoothing the obverse legends to make that side anepigraphic and planing the reverse flat before carefully engraving WILLIAM PITT / LOST IN PARCHMENT / AND BVTISM / IVLY XXX MDCCLXVI. The last line references the date (July 30, 1766) Pitt became Prime Minister, but the whole quote comes from a line written by (noted medal collector) Thomas Hollis to his friend Edmund Quincy of Boston in a letter of October 1, 1766: "the recent unparalleled prostitution and apostasy of the once magnanimous and almost divine ******* [Chatham], who now is totally lost in parchment and BUTISM." Lord Bute, once Prime Minister, was by that point entirely unpopular with those on the left side of Britain's internal politics. This medal is both professionally produced and an apparent one-off; it is unique today and probably always was. That it quotes Thomas Hollis -who himself was one of the leading collectors of medals and commissioners of commemorative medals in this era - suggests his involvement. That the quote comes from a private letter between Hollis and his American correspondent suggests that one may have made the medal for the other. The engraving has every appearance of being of the mid-18th century period. This is an absolutely fascinating piece, a centerpiece to an advanced Pitt collection.

From the E Pluribus Unum Collection. Earlier from the Ted Craige estate, October 1982; our (Stack's) sale of the John J. Ford, Jr. Collection, Part XIV, May 2006, lot 384.