Early years (1817–1837) When the sovereign entered circulation in late 1817, it was not initially popular, as the public preferred the convenience of the banknotes the sovereign had been intended to replace. Lack of demand meant that mintages dropped from 2,347,230 in 1818 to 3,574 the following year. Another reason why few sovereigns were struck in 1819 was a proposal, eventually rejected, by economist
David Ricardo to eliminate gold as a coinage metal, though making it available on demand from the Bank of England. Once this plan was abandoned in 1820, the Bank encouraged the circulation of gold sovereigns, but acceptance among the British public was slow. As difficulties over the exchange of wartime banknotes were overcome, the sovereign became more popular, and with low-value banknotes becoming scarcer, in 1826 Parliament
prohibited the issuance of notes with a value of less than five pounds in England and Wales. The early sovereigns were heavily exported; in 1819,
Robert Peel estimated that of the some £5,000,000 in gold struck in France since the previous year, three-quarters of the gold used had come from the new British coinage, melted down. Many more sovereigns were exported to France in the 1820s as the metal alloyed with the gold included silver, which could be profitably recovered, with the gold often returned to Britain and struck again into sovereigns. Beginning in 1829, the Mint was able to eliminate the silver, but the drain on sovereigns from before then continued. George III died in January 1820, succeeded by George, Prince Regent, as
George IV. Mint officials decided to continue to use the late king's head on coinage for the remainder of the year. For King GeorgeIV's coinage, Pistrucci modified the George and Dragon reverse, eliminating the surrounding Garter ribbon and motto, with a reeded border substituted. Pistrucci also modified the figure of the saint, placing a sword in his hand in place of the broken lance seen previously, eliminating the streamer from his helmet, and refining the look of the cloak. The obverse design for GeorgeIV's sovereigns featured a "Laureate head" of GeorgeIV, based on the bust Pistrucci had prepared for the Coronation medal. The new version was authorised by an
Order in Council of 5May 1821. These were struck every year between 1821 and 1825, but the king was unhappy with the depiction of him and requested a new one be prepared, based on a more flattering bust by
Francis Chantrey. Pistrucci refused to copy the work of another artist and was barred from further work on the coinage. Second Engraver (later Chief Engraver)
William Wyon was assigned to translate Chantrey's bust into a coin design, and the new sovereign came into use during 1825. It did not bear the George and Dragon design, as the new Master of the Mint,
Thomas Wallace, disliked several of the current coinage designs, and had
Jean Baptiste Merlen of the Royal Mint prepare new reverse designs. The new reverse for the sovereign featured the Ensigns Armorial, or
royal arms of the United Kingdom, crowned, with the lions of England seen in two of the quarters, balanced by those of Scotland and the harp of Ireland. Set on the shield are the arms of
Hanover, again crowned, depicting the armorial bearings of
Brunswick,
Lüneburg and
Celle. The George and Dragon design would not again appear on the sovereign until 1871.
William IV's accession in 1830 upon the death of his brother George IV led to new designs for the sovereign, with the new king's depiction engraved by William Wyon based on a bust by Chantrey. Two slightly different busts were used, with what is usually called the "first bust" used for most 1831 circulating pieces (the first year of production) and some from 1832, with the "second bust" used for the prototype
pattern coins that year, as well as for
proof coins of 1831, some from 1832 and taking over entirely by 1833. The reverse shows another depiction by Merlen of the Ensigns Armorial, with the date accompanied by the Latin word
Anno, or "in the year". These were struck every year until the year of the king's death, 1837.
Victorian era on the obverse and the royal shield within a wreath on the other|1842 "Shield reverse" sovereign The accession of
Queen Victoria in 1837 ended the
personal union between Britain and Hanover, as under the latter's
Salic Law, a woman could not take the Hanoverian throne. Thus, both sides of the sovereign had to be changed. Wyon designed his "Young head" portrait of the Queen, which he engraved, for the obverse, and Merlen engraved the reverse, depicting the royal arms inside a wreath, and likely played some part in designing it. The new coin was approved on 26 February 1838, and with the exception of 1840 and 1867, the "shield back" sovereign was struck at the Royal Mint in London every year from 1838 to 1874. Sovereigns struck in London with the shield design between 1863 and 1874 bear small numbers under the shield, representing which
coinage die was used. Records of why the numbers were used are not known to survive, with one widely printed theory that they were used to track die wear.
George Frederick Ansell states in his 1870 book
The Royal Mint, Its Workings, Conduct, And Operations Fully And Practically Explained that "the reverse die has been made to carry, in addition to its recognised device, a small number, with a view to determine at which coining press, and on what particular day, the numbered die was used, that bad work might be traced to an individual." By 1850, some £94million in sovereigns and
half sovereigns had been struck and circulated widely, well beyond Britain's shores, a dispersion aided by the British government, who saw the sovereign's use as an auxiliary to their imperialist ambitions. Gold is a soft metal, and the hazards of circulation tended to make sovereigns lightweight over time. In 1838, when the legacy of
James Smithson was converted into gold in preparation for transmission to the United States, American authorities requested recently-struck sovereigns, likely to maximise the quantity of gold when the sovereigns were melted after arrival in the United States. The weight of a newly-struck sovereign was intended to be 123.274 grains (7.98802 g). It ceased to be legal currency for £1 if found to weigh less than 122
grains (i.e. a deficiency of 1
pence in gold per sovereign). By the early 1840s, the Bank of England estimated that twenty per cent of the gold coins that came into its hands were lightweight. In part to boost the sovereign's reputation in trade, the Bank undertook a programme of recoinage, melting lightweight gold coins and using the gold for new, full-weight ones. Between 1842 and 1845, the Bank withdrew and had recoined some £14million in lightweight gold, about one-third the amount of that metal in circulation. This not only kept the sovereign to standard, it probably removed most of the remaining guineas still in commerce. The unlucky holder of a lightweight gold coin could only turn it in as bullion, would lose at least 1
pence because of the lightness and often had to pay an equal amount to cover the Bank of England's costs. There was also increased quality control within the Royal Mint; by 1866, every gold and silver coin was weighed individually. The result of these efforts was that the sovereign became, in Sir
John Clapham's later phrase, the "chief coin of the world". The
California Gold Rush and other discoveries of the 1840s and 1850s boosted the amount of available gold and also the number of sovereigns struck, with £150million in sovereigns and half sovereigns coined between 1850 and 1875. The wear problem continued: it was estimated that, on average, a sovereign became lightweight after fifteen years in circulation. The
Coinage Act 1870 tightened standards at the Royal Mint, requiring sovereigns to be individually tested at the annual
Trial of the Pyx rather than in bulk. These standards resulted in a high rejection rate for newly coined sovereigns, though less than for the half sovereign, which sometimes exceeded 50 per cent. When the Royal Mint was rebuilt in 1882, a decisive factor in shutting down production for renovation rather than moving to a new mint elsewhere was the Bank of England's report that there was an abnormally large stock of sovereigns and that no harm would result if they could not be coined in London for a year. Advances in technology allowed sovereigns to be individually weighed by automated machines at the Bank of England by the 1890s, and efforts to keep the coin at full weight were aided by an 1889 Act of Parliament which allowed redemption of lightweight gold coin at full face value, with the loss from wear to fall upon the government. The Coinage Act 1889 also authorised the Bank of England to redeem worn gold coins from before Victoria's reign, but on 22 November 1890 all gold coins from before her reign were called in by
Royal Proclamation and demonetised effective 28 February 1891. Owing to an ongoing programme to melt and recoin lightweight pieces, estimates of sovereigns in trade weighing less than the legal minimum had fallen to about four per cent by 1900. The sovereign was seen in fiction: in
Dickens'
Oliver Twist, Mrs Bumble is paid £25 in sovereigns for her information.
Joseph Conrad, in his novels set in Latin America, refers several times to ship's captains keeping sovereigns as a ready store of value. Although many sovereigns were melted down for recoining on reaching a foreign land (as were those for the
Smithsonian) it was regarded as a circulating coin in dozens of British colonies and even in nations such as Brazil and Portugal; the latter accepted it at a value of 4,500
reis. In 1871, the Deputy Master of the Mint,
Charles William Fremantle, restored the Pistrucci George and Dragon design to the sovereign, as part of a drive to beautify the coinage. The return of Saint George was approved by the Queen, and authorised by an Order in Council dated 14 January 1871. The two designs were struck side by side in London from 1871 to 1874, and at the Australian branch mints until 1887, after which the Pistrucci design alone was used. The saint returned to the rarely-struck two- and five-pound pieces in 1887, and was placed on the half sovereign in 1893. Wyon's "Young head" of Queen Victoria for the sovereign's obverse was struck from 1838 until 1887, when it was replaced by the "
Jubilee head" by
Joseph Boehm. That obverse was criticised and was replaced in 1893 by the "
Old head" by
Thomas Brock. Victoria's death in 1901 led to a new obverse for her son and successor,
Edward VII by
George William de Saulles, which began production in 1902; Edward's death in 1910 necessitated a new obverse for his son,
George V by
Bertram Mackennal. Pistrucci's George and Dragon design continued on the reverse. == Branch mint coinage ==