Stanley Gibbons Baldwin’s sells Frank Waley Civil War siege coins collection

Among all that revising on battles, treachery, political shenanigans, Sir Thomas Fairfax and his New Model Army, one event passed us by...the sieges of the important and heavily fortified Pontefract Castle, built in about 1070 and where Richard II was held prisoner and either murdered or starved to death in 1400.

The rocky outcrop proved crucial as the town endured three separate blockades, two of them back-to-back in the winter and spring of 1644 and 1645. The first, led by Fairfax, lasted from December, 1644 until the following March when Marmaduke Langdale, 1st Baron Langdale of Holme (1598-1661), arrived with Royalist reinforcements and the Parliamentarian army retreated. Thanks to a diary kept by one of the besieged, we know that during a ferocious bombardment which destroyed the Piper Tower, more than 1,400 artillery rounds were fired at the castle in one month over Christmas and new year.

Eleven men and boys escaped one such pounding by fleeing into the bell tower where they were trapped for five days. Eventually, they cut the bell ropes, crept along the church roof at night, scrambled down the wall and escaped back to the castle. But Roundhead soldiers spotted them, shooting one man dead and wounding another.

The second siege began almost immediately, with the Parliamentarians using a more systematic approach with earthworks, trenches and small forts to encircle and starve the occupants and the garrison surrendered in July 1645 after hearing of Charles I's defeat at Naseby. It was no meek surrender though, with the garrison marching out proudly and slowly, their flags flying, muskets aloft and each carrying a musket ball in his mouth. They then joined the Royalist garrison at Newark, which held out until ordered to surrender by the King in 1646.

Three years later, Royalists retook the castle, which resumed its important role as a base for launching raiding parties and harrying Roundheads. Oliver Cromwell himself led the final siege of Pontefract Castle in November, 1648 and following the King's beheading in January, 1649 the Pontefract garrison was handed to Major General John Lambert (1619-1684). Then a grand jury at York gave orders that Pontefract Castle should be "totally demolished & levelled to the ground", with salvaged materials sold off.

Here endeth the history lesson...and we move on to the sale at Stanley Gibbons Baldwin's in London of the collection of Civil War siege coins assembled by Frank Waley (1893-1987). It featured a rare survivor of those struck during this final siege of Pontefract Castle, described by topographer William Camden (1551-1623) as "no less goodly to the eye than safe for the defence". The octagonal shilling, with the letters P and C either side of a royal crown and with a cannon protruding from the castle, denoting active defence, was struck in the name of Charles, but it was for Charles II and not the 1st, as the latter was now dead and, technically, his son was king. It fetched £10,100.

Top price, however, was achieved for a 1645 shilling from the siege of Carlisle, which lasted from autumn 1644 to summer 1645. It fetched £22,800, against an estimate of £8,000-£12,000. Carlisle was one of the few places in the North to hold out after the Royalist defeat at Marston Moor. A Parliamentarian army surrounded Carlisle with guns and earthworks to starve the city. Food ran out; all the horses were eaten, then the dogs and rats. After the Royalist defeat at Naseby in June, 1645, there was no hope of relief and on June 25 the city surrendered.

Siege (or obsidional) coins were struck as besieged Royalist fortified towns were cut off and money was needed to pay for the day-to-day transactions and to the defending troops to discourage desertion or even defection. Isolated from main Royalist forces, coins were in limited supply and any silver such as church plate, flagons and private flatware was turned into crude coin.

* At Tennants, a Victorian officer's black cloth forage cap with black horsehair plume and in its original box sold for £1,055.

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