Charles Clarke (numismatist)

Clark's first and only numismatic work Some conjectures relative to a very antient piece of money (1751), which incorrectly identified a recently discovered coin, proved to be an utter failure.

It was refuted swiftly and unsympathetically by numismatist George North, who correctly identified the coin as a common Peny-yard pence.

[1][3] In 1751, Clarke published a short, 26-page pamphlet, entitled Some conjectures relative to a very antient piece of money lately found at Eltham in Kent.

North's Remarks inescapably proved the coin was, rather than an exceptional artifact: a piece of the base money denominated Peny-yard pence from their being stamped or made at Peny-yard, a place near Ross in Herefordshire, about the time of Henry iii [r. 1216–1272], when this sort of money is supposed to have begun to be made at the forges there for the currency of the workmen employed at them.

He says my Remarks have been attended with very bad consequences to his reputation and character; if this be really fact, it is through his own inaccuracy, and not any malevolence in me, who desire to injure no man living.

Clarke correctly concluded that the name did not refer to a person, but was rather a misreading of the Latin word "fortuna" on Carausius' poorly preserved coins.

Announced in the Conjectures, apparently to be his principal work, a volume entitled The Hebrew, Samaritan, Greek, and Roman Medallist was never published.

If Clarke made any further antiquarian inquiries, these do not survive, barring his 1815 genealogy, which historian C. E. A. Cheesman regards as "no less muddled and misleading than his earlier numismatic work".

On 16 March 1773, Clarke was nominated to be the poor vicar of Canterbury or Ely who was to be given a sum of money from the royal bounty for his upkeep, but Thomas Robins Ellis (d. 1788), clergyman at Whittlesey, won the funds instead.