BRITANNIA MODELLED FROM FAMOUS LADY

Evening Star, Issue 23864, 19 April 1941, Page 6

BRITANNIA MODELLED FROM FAMOUS LADY

Who is the woman on the reverse of a penny:' Most people answer Britannia, but she is also a Mrs Stewart, later Duchess of Richmond, who lived in the reign of Charles 11. When the king ordered the new coinage in 1665, Rhilip Roetier, the engraver, had to have a model and, according to Repys’s diary—“ There is Mrs Stewart’s face . . . and a pretty thing it is, that he should choose her face to represent Britannia by.” Although an earlier figure of_ Britannia appears on a Roman coin of a.d. 160, and the modern figure has become idealised, Mrs Stewart is the only commoner who has ever been portrayed on the national coinage. John Bull was originally a character in a satire called ‘ The History of John Bull,’ written by Dr Arbuthuot in 1712. By a coincidence, the music of our national anthem was composed by a still earlier Dr John Bull, organist in the Chapel Royal, in 1591. Uncle Sam was a real person. A certain Samuel Wilson, of Troy, New York, was supplying meat to the troops in the war of 1812, and the soldiers called it “ Uncle Sam’s beef.” The name caught, and everything belonging to the Government began to be called “ Uncle Sam’s.” After Wilson’s death in 1854, the cartoonists got busy and produced the familiar figure.