For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.
V. THE HIGHER STANDARD MARK
The higher standard mark has a significance peculiarly its own. By 8 and 9 William III, cap. 8, it was enacted that any person bringing silver plate from January 1696 to November 1697[2] to any of the Royal Mints, which silver plate be marked as sterling silver with the mark usually employed at the Hall of the Goldsmiths’ Company of London should receive “without tarrying till it be melted and assayed,” five shillings and four pence per ounce.
Section 9 of this chapter of the Act contains in official terms an allusion to the grave scandals that had shaken the commercial stability of the country for many years. “And whereas it might reasonably be suspected that part of the silver coins of the realm had been, by persons regarding their own private gain more than the public good, molten and converted into vessels of silver or other manufactured plate, which crime has been the more easily perpetrated by them, inasmuch as the goldsmiths or other workers of plate by the former laws and statutes of the realm were not obliged to make their plate of finer silver than the sterling or standard ordained for the monies of the realm,” it was enacted that from and after 25th March 1697 no silver plate should be made that was not of higher standard than the coin of the realm. It was laid down that the legal marks on all silver were to be the maker’s mark, expressed by the two first letters of his surname, and that the marks of the assay offices should be for this new plate the lion’s head erased and “the figure of a woman commonly called Britannia” in lieu of the former marks of the leopard’s head and the lion passant. In addition to this the date mark was to be stamped to show in what year the plate was made. In this Act of 1696 it will be observed that the mention of the leopard’s head and the lion passant include London marks only. As the manufacture of silver plate of the old standard was illegal after the passing of this Act and the use of the old marks was equally illegal, it would appear that the provincial assay offices were precluded from stamping silver.