"MARGARET PATTEN, aged 136: the Gift of John Dowsell, William Goff, Matthew Burnett, Thomas Parker, Robert Wright, John Parquot, Overseers, anno 1737."
Margaret Patten was buried in the burial-ground of what was then called the Broadway Church, now Christ Church, and there is a stone on the eastern boundary wall inscribed, "Near this place lieth MARGARET PATTEN, who died June 26, 1739, in the Parish Workhouse, aged 136." In Walcott's _Memorials of { 443} Westminster_, p. 288., we are told "she was a native of Lochborough, near Paisley. She was brought to England to prepare Scotch broth for King James II., but, owing to the abdication of that monarch, fell into poverty and died in St. Margaret's workhouse, where her portrait is still preserved. Her body was followed to the grave by the parochial authorities and many of the principal inhabitants, while the children sang a hymn before it reached its last resting-place."]
_Etymology of "Coin."_--What is the etymology of our noun and verb _coin_ and _to coin_? I do not know if I have been anticipated, but beg to suggest the following:--_Coin_, a piece of cornered metal; _To coin_, the act of cornering such block of metal.
In Cornwall, the blocks of tin, when first run into moulds from the smelting furnace, are _square_; and when the metal is to be fined or assayed, the miner's phrase is, that it is to be _coined_; for the _corners_ of the moulded block are _cut off_, and subjected to the _assay_; and the decree of fineness proved is stamped on the now cornerless block--thereafter called a _coin of tin_. It is, I conceive, by no means a violent supposition that such _coins of tin_ were current as money very many ages before either silver, gold, copper, bronze, lead, tin, or any other metal moulded, stamped, engraved, or fashioned into such coins as we now know had come into use. We know to what far-back ages the finding of tin carries us, its find being entirely confined to Cornwall; its presence near the surface in an ore readily reduced and easily melted making its reduction into the metallic state possible in the very rudest state of society and of the arts.
[See Dr. Richardson for the following derivation:--"Fr. _coigner_, It. _cuniare_, Sp. _cunar_, _acuñar_, to wedge, and also to coin. Menage and Spelman agree from the Latin _cuneus_. '_Cuneus_; sigillum ferreum, quo nummus _cuditur_; a forma dictum: atque inde _coin_ quasi _cune_ pro monetâ.' An iron seal with which metal is stamped; so called from the shape. And hence money is called _coin_ (q. _cune_, wedge).--_Spelman._" The Rev. T. R. Brown, in an unpublished _Dictionary of Difficult Etymology_[1], suggests the following:--"Fr. _coign_, a coin, stamp, &c.; Gaelic, _cuin_, a coin. Probably from the Sanscrit _kan_, to shine, desire, covet; _kanaka_, gold, &c. The Hebrew _ceseph_, money, coin, is derived in like manner from the verb _casaph_, to desire, covet. The other meaning attached to the French word _coign_, viz. a wedge, appears to be derived from quite a different root."]