Item 1968/1 - Letter from Anthony Thompson

1 item, paper

Letters from Anthony Thompson, in manuscript, one folio (recto & verso), dated 3 July 1968, concerning research that he has been doing into gold whistles such as the one found in Florida and recently sold in New York. In particular, he has been looking into the whistle that originally belonged to Scottish privateer Sir Andrew Barton. Henry VIII presented Barton's whistle with a chain to Sir Edward Howard when he became Lord Admiral of England in 1511. Howard later bequeathed the whistle to the Earl of Suffolk with a chain of "bowed nobles". JDAT wonders whether the chain consisted in a chain of "English nobles hammered into scyphate shape, like Byzantine nomismata", or Barton's original chain of Scottish coins, ultimately describing the matter as "a nice little problem which is probably insolvable. The letter is unsigned but matches that on another letter of Thompson from 1958 that deals with Scottish coinage.