Coins, Tokens and Historical Medals

John Elder and William Stewart Indicted for Sedition at the High Court of Justiciary, Edinburgh [1792], a white metal medal, unsigned [by J. Bell], for a nation to be free it is sufficient that it wills it, rev. liberty of conscience equal representation and just taxation, 39mm (BHM 502; Brodie 385). Fine, extremely rare £80-£100

Provenance: SNC September 1977 (8502); R.H. Thompson Collection.

John Elder, bookseller and stationer, North Bridge street, Edinburgh, and William Stewart, merchant, were indicted for sedition at the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh on 10 January 1793, on a charge of compiling a document entitled Rights of Man and the Origin of Government in autumn 1792. The document, printed in an edition of some 3,000 copies by John Darling in Edinburgh, was distributed widely in the locality of the city and also via booksellers in Glasgow, Paisley, Port Glasgow and Anstruther. Elder and Stewart conspired with James Bell, a ‘tinman’ in Leith, for Bell to ‘cast and throw off several thousand of the said medals’ in the autumn of 1792, which saw wide circulation at the time. Court proceedings for the period January to March 1793 do not record any prosecution of Elder or his associates, who failed to appear before the judiciary and were declared outlaws