Massachusetts Bay Colony, Oak Tree Silver Twopence (1662)

Historical Context

The silver twopence of the Massachusetts Bay Colony occupies a unique position in seventeenth-century Anglo-American monetary history. Operating without a royal charter during the English Civil War and Interregnum, the Massachusetts General Court established a local mint in Boston in May 1652 under the direction of silversmiths John Hull and Robert Sanderson. The founding statute authorized the striking of shillings, sixpences, and threepences, which evolved from the plain punch-stamped New England ("NE") pieces into the Willow Tree and Oak Tree series. Each of these earlier emissions bore the frozen date 1652, an administrative fiction retained throughout decades of production to preserve the original statutory authority.

By the early 1660s, the persistent scarcity of small fractional silver caused severe disruption in everyday retail transactions and petty domestic exchange. In response, during the legislative session of May 1662, the General Court enacted supplementary legislation requiring the mintmasters to convert a compulsory proportion of incoming bullion into twopenny pieces. The order mandated fifty pounds of twopences for every hundred pounds of silver coined during the first year, followed by twenty pounds per hundred pounds annually for an operative term of seven years.

Striking a newly dated denomination in 1662 carried significant political risks. Following the Restoration of King Charles II in 1660, the continued operation of an unauthorized colonial mint was viewed by English authorities as an unlawful infringement on royal sovereignty. By engraving the overt year 1662 on the new dies rather than adhering to the established 1652 convention, Massachusetts openly exercised regalian coining privileges under the restored monarchy. The issue nevertheless supplied indispensable circulating medium for colonial commerce until the eventual closure of the Boston facility in the early 1680s.

Obverse Iconographic Composition

The obverse composition centers upon a stylized arboreal emblem traditionally designated in numismatic literature as an oak tree. Unlike the taller, vertical trunks seen on the corresponding shillings of the Oak Tree family, the twopence die features a compact, spreading shrub-like form. The central trunk is short and dense, giving rise to multiple stiff branches with spiky, thorn-like foliage clusters.

Flanking the base of the trunk are two diminutive lateral shrubs or root offshoots, and the entire arboreal device rests upon a raised, segmented double groundline. Near the center of the trunk, genuine specimens frequently show a faint circular indentation: the compass centerpoint impressed into the die face by the engraver to guide the layout of the concentric borders.

The central field is enclosed by an inner ring of raised round beads. Between this inner ring and a matching outer beaded rim lies the circular legend channel. On preserved specimens, the planchet often reveals a slight oval elongation or gentle surface undulation, characteristic of the mechanical methods employed at the Boston mint.

Obverse Epigraphy and Inscriptions

The obverse legend is executed in uppercase Latin epigraphic capitals characterized by pronounced wedge-shaped serifs.

• Original Inscription: MASATHVSETS · IN : (with punctuation varying across die wear from isolated dots to paired vertical stops)
• Transliteration: MASATHVSETS IN
• Translation: "In Massachusetts"

The legend begins at approximately ten o'clock and runs clockwise between the concentric beaded borders. The spelling reflects seventeenth-century colonial orthography, utilizing the Roman letter V to represent the vowel U. Punctuating stops separate the territorial name from the preposition, linking syntactically with the territorial title completed on the reverse face.

Reverse Iconographic Composition

The reverse design eschews pictorial imagery in favor of a strictly alphanumeric arrangement within concentric borders. The central circular field, circumscribed by a continuous border of raised beads, contains a balanced two-line typographic presentation: the calendar date placed horizontally above the fractional denomination.

The date 1662 is rendered in Arabic numerals across the upper register of the inner field. Directly beneath the date sits the Roman numeral II, signifying two pence, or one-sixth of a New England silver shilling. Surrounding the inner circle is a broad legend band bounded externally by an outer perimeter of raised beads. At the top of the outer circle, an ornamental rosette composed of eight miniature pellets divides the beginning and conclusion of the territorial legend.

Reverse Epigraphy and Inscriptions

The reverse inscriptions combine Latin capital lettering, Arabic numerals, and Roman numerical value indicators.

• Perimeter Inscription: · NEW ENGLAND ·
• Field Inscriptions: Upper line 1662 / Lower line II
• Transliteration: NEW ENGLAND (Date: 1662; Denomination: II)
• Translation: "New England; [Year] 1662; Two [Pence]"

Read continuously from the obverse, the complete legend forms the single geographic designation MASATHVSETS IN NEW ENGLAND ("In Massachusetts, New England"). On larger denominations such as the shilling and sixpence, the formula includes the abbreviation AN DOM for Anno Domini; however, due to the constrained surface area of the twopenny planchet, the mintmasters omitted the chronological phrase entirely. The rosette at the twelve o'clock position serves as both an aesthetic balance and a visual separator between the terminal D and initial N.

Typology and Documented Variants

Every authentic 1662 Oak Tree twopence was struck from a single obverse die paired with a single reverse die, systematically catalogued under the unified marriage Salmon 1, Noe 29–34, and Crosby 1-A. Because only one die set was engraved for the denomination, all recognized numismatic varieties chronicle the physical degradation, fracture lines, and subsequent re-engraving of this single pair.

Numismatists divide the emission into two distinct developmental phases:

1. Early State: Small Terminal "2" (Salmon 1-A; Noe-29 through Noe-31.5; Crosby 1-a1 and 1-a2)
   In its original state, the terminal digit 2 of the date 1662 is small, slender, and set noticeably apart from the second 6. The progression begins with Noe-29, characterized by pristine dies and a short, abrupt stub on the lower tail of the 2. In Noe-30, a fine hairline fissure develops from the outer rim toward the date. In Noe-31 and Noe-31.5, this fracture expands into a pronounced die crack crossing through the final digit 2 and touching the second 6.

2. Late State: Recut Large Terminal "2" (Salmon 1-B; Noe-32 through Noe-34; Crosby 1-a3)
   Following severe cracking on the reverse die, the engraver reinforced the damaged area by recutting the final numeral. The replacement 2 is conspicuously taller, thicker, and positioned closer to the preceding 6. Initial strikes of this state appear as Noe-32. Continued operation led to progressive structural exhaustion, culminating in Noe-33 and Noe-34, where an extensive horizontal die break bisects the entire date line 1662.

Institutional Specimen Data:
The Cleveland Museum of Art preserves an example of the 1662 twopence under accession 1940.442, measuring 1.5 cm (9/16 in.) in diameter. The museum's public catalogue lists a specimen mass of 1.555 g (0.05 oz.). Numismatically, this figure represents an institutional anomaly: 1.555 grams corresponds precisely to 1 pennyweight (24 grains troy), which is exactly double the legal statutory standard of 12 grains (0.778 g) enacted by the General Court. The cause of the difference is not established by the museum record. A transcription error, conversion or unusual physical weight must not be certified without curatorial confirmation and independent measurement.

Scholarly Debates and Attribution Limitations

Scholarly debate surrounding the Oak Tree twopence focuses on three primary areas: the mechanical apparatus of the Boston mint, the diplomatic lore surrounding its reception in London, and the presence of nineteenth-century fabrications.

In his monograph on Massachusetts silver, Christopher J. Salmon formulated the thesis that the Oak Tree issues and subsequent large-planchet Pine Tree coins were struck using a rocker press - a machine employing curved cylindrical dies rocking under mechanical pressure - rather than by traditional manual hammer striking or screw presses. Salmon argued that this mechanism directly accounts for the oval contours, localized peripheral weakness, and sinusoidal flan curvature typical of surviving pieces. However, other colonial historians maintain that seventeenth-century mint records remain silent regarding the precise machinery, suggesting that roller presses or hammer-driven rocker jigs could produce comparable planchet characteristics.

A celebrated numismatic anecdote recorded in the eighteenth century by the Reverend Andrew Eliot claimed that colonial agent Sir Thomas Temple pacified King Charles II by presenting Massachusetts coins and claiming that the tree represented the Royal Oak of Boscobel, which had concealed the king after the Battle of Worcester. While modern historians recognize this narrative as a loyalist diplomatic legend, it illustrates the very real political delicacy surrounding the colony's unsanctioned monetary system.

Finally, numismatic attribution must contend with spurious pieces dated 1652. Because the twopenny denomination was not authorized until May 1662, all Oak Tree twopences bearing the date 1652 are nineteenth-century fabrications, produced primarily in New York during the 1850s by Thomas Wyatt. Genuine pieces derive solely from the 1662 die pair. While specimen CMA 1940.442 is firmly attributed to this single authorized issue, assigning an individual coin to a microscopic sub-variety (such as Noe-30 versus Noe-31) cannot be achieved from planar photographs alone, as peripheral softness can conceal the precise path of early hairline die breaks.

References

1. The Early Coins of America; and the Laws Governing Their Issue. Sylvester S. Crosby (1875), pp. 34–53, 75, Plate I
2. The Oak Tree Coinage of Massachusetts. Noe, Sydney P. (1947), Numismatic Notes and Monographs 110, 23 pp. and 10 plates; publisher bibliography, not a full-text link.
3. Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England: Vol. IV, Part II, 1661–1674. Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, ed. (1854), pp. 51–52
4. Oak Tree Two Pence (Accession 1940.442). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Collections Online, Accession 1940.442
5. The Coinage of Early America: The Massachusetts Silver Coinage. Louis Jordan (2002), Hesburgh Libraries, University of Notre Dame