Diaconis

I hope that everyone had a most enjoyable Christmas, I certainly did with the concomitant lashings of Christmas comestibles for which I paid for in a regrettable surfeit of calories and post-festive penitence😂..... Haven't "been on" for a while and noticed this interesting post by Mr. Tye, so I thought I'd have a stab at it... You are quite right to point out that the observed weights of surviving 1351 nobles cluster very closely around what we would now express as c. 120 Troy grains, and that the variation you cite (for example, 7.75 g) is entirely consistent with normal medieval tolerances, including the remedy at the shear. On purely numerical grounds, the metrology is remarkably stable. Where I would differ is not on the arithmetic, but on the historical inference drawn from it. There is no evidence¹ that the Troy weight system as such—that is, explicitly named, formally defined, or administratively adopted—existed in England in 1351 or was used as “Troy” to regulate coin weight. At that date the Tower mint, producing the noble, was still operating explicitly in Tower weight, and continued to do so until its formal replacement by Troy weight in 1527 under Henry VIII. Expressed in Tower-weight terms, a nominal 120 Troy-grain noble corresponds to 112½ Tower grains (120 × 450⁄480), which fits comfortably within contemporary Tower-weight reckoning. What your figures do demonstrate, however, is that the grain employed in England in 1351 is effectively identical to the later Troy grain, and that the regulation of the noble’s weight is entirely consistent with what we would now describe as Troy-grain-based measurement. In that limited, practical sense, the Tower system behaves exactly as Troy would later behave. In this respect, Tower and Troy weights did not derive from one another but descend from a shared metrological ancestry, which is precisely why the English transition from Tower to Troy in 1527 was arithmetically seamless. The difficulty, then, is one of nomenclature rather than metrology. To describe the 1351 standard as “Troy” risks importing a sixteenth-century administrative label into a fourteenth-century context. In short, the numbers are sound; what is at issue is whether it is historically accurate to call them “Troy” before the name, the system, and the administrative framework had yet been adopted in England. ¹Should anyone be aware of a fourteenth-century English mint ordinance that actually uses the word “Troy,” I would be delighted to see it; until then, the numbers seem stubbornly unimpressed by nomenclature. With that, may I wish everyone a very happy New Year. May your grains be stable, your scales honest, your tolerances forgiving, and your anachronisms few — and may 2026 finally deliver that elusive coin we all hope to find. 🥳

I see that there’s a gratuitous (?) glorification of his escapades on Amazon at the moment called Breaking Dad. Certainly gives a new meaning to “Know your dealer”.

Nice Struggling to whittle down my “ must have, or will throw toys out of pram ” list. Might have to dig deep, I fear that there will be stiff competition on many of the lots. 🙀

search Ticket Central as a start

Tonight, I sorted my coins according to the monarch's resemblance to Julie Goodyear. One of my favourite Dylan tracks, those lyrics just leave you guessing. Seen him six times but he never performed this song, I don't think he has ever played it live despite trying over 40 versions and never being happy with it. Lou Reed tried to do it but failed IMO. Not recommended to find yourself with an obscured view of the stage. I remember one concert where for an hour and a half all I saw was the neck of Dylan's guitar bobbing back and forth from behind an ornate stanchion, 'not somebody to move around with much' 🙂

Just a thought. Suppose we believe Hobbes that the state of nature is a horrible place where laws do not exist, property is non-existent, and everyone is out for themselves without a care for others. That then is the motivation to work and pay a portion of the proceeds from the fruits of our labours to maintain a government to protect us, and maintain natural law. The irony is that the value we are getting for our buck these days is inversely proportional to the greed and self-centeredness of the government itself. Regressing into the state of nature and paying for the privilege 😃 Has a Pythonesque feel to it.

Gordon Bennett

my thoughts exactly Del👍🏽

Participated at Noonans today, some interesting lots. This Cromwell shilling surprised me hammering at £2k incl premium. I had convinced myself that I might pick it up for a song however another bidder had seen something I didn’t. Im still looking 🧐

And it goes on… prices for top pieces just keep on rising. An excellent Petition Crown just went for $960,000 with BP at Heritage. Electrotype gap filler for me😬, and they’re not cheap either.

A rare sight in Telford, just taken from Mum’s kitchen window.

“watching the wheels go round and round”