1800, Great Britain, George III. Cu "Failed Assassination" Medal. NGC MS-64 BN!

Description

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1800, Great Britain, George III. Copper "Failed Assassination" Medal. NGC MS-64 BN!
Mint Year: 1800
Medallist: C. H. Küchler
Condition:
Certified and graded by NGC as MS-64 BN!
Reference: BHM 4893, Eimer 916 (GBP 260), Pollard 23.
Denomination: Medal -
Failed asassination by James Hadfield on 15th May 1800.
Diameter: 48mm
Material: Copper
Weight: 55gm
Obverse:
Draped and cuirassed bust of George III left. Medallist´s signature (C.H.KÜCHLER.F.) below arm.++
Legend:  GEORGIVS III . D : G . MAGN . BRIT . FR . ET HIB . REX .
Reverse:
Radiant Eye of Providence above flaming and inscribed altar.
Legend: PERSPICITE ET PROTEGIT. / D.O.M.
Exergue: A SICARIO SERVATUS MAI . XV . MDCCC .
C.H. Küchler
worked for the Soho Mint, Birmingham, from 1793 until his death in 1810. He produced coin dies and thirty documented medals. Küchler was born in Flanders around 1740. He first came to England in March 1793, where he was employed as an engraver at the Soho Mint, owned by the notable manufacturer Matthew Boulton. He was Boulton's sole artist for designing and die-cutting, and produced the designs for various coins, medals and tokens, including the copper "cartwheel" pennies and twopences, and medals depicting the Battle of Trafalgar, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. He designed at least three of the obverse portraits for circulating coins (for example the one on the popular cartwheel twopence) for the long reign of George III. He later left the Mint, but continued to be employed by Boulton's firm in London until his death. Küchler died in Handsworth in 1810.
James Hadfield
or
Hatfield
(1771/1772 – 23 January 1841) attempted to assassinate George III of the United Kingdom in 1800 but was acquitted of attempted murder by reason of insanity.
Hadfield's early years are unknown but he was severely injured at the Battle of Tourcoing in 1794. Before being captured by the French, he was struck eight times on the head with a sabre, the wounds being prominent for the rest of his life. After returning to England, he became involved in a millennialist movement and came to believe that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ would be advanced if he himself were killed by the British government. He therefore resolved, in conspiracy with Bannister Truelock, to attempt the assassination of the King and bring about his own judicial execution.
On the evening of 15 May 1800, at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, during the playing of the national anthem, Hadfield fired a pistol at the King standing in the royal box but missed. Hadfield was tried for high treason and was defended by Thomas Erskine, the leading barrister of that era. Hadfield pleaded insanity but the standard of the day for a successful plea was that the defendant must be "lost to all sense … incapable of forming a judgement upon the consequences of the act which he is about to do". Hadfield's planning of the shooting appeared to contradict such a claim. Due to the 1795 Treason Act, there was little distinction between plotting treason and actually committing treason, thus Erskine chose to challenge the insanity test, instead contending that delusion "unaccompanied by frenzy or raving madness [was] the true character of insanity". Two surgeons and a physician testified that the delusions were the consequence of his earlier head injuries. The judge, Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon, at this point halted the trial declaring that the verdict "was clearly an acquittal" but "the prisoner, for his own sake, and for the sake of society at large, must not be discharged".
Up to that time, defendants acquitted by reason of insanity had faced no certain fate and had often been released back to the safe-keeping of their families. Parliament speedily passed the Criminal Lunatics Act 1800 to provide for the indefinite detention of insane defendants (and the Treason Act 1800 to make it easier to prosecute people for attempts on the life of the king). Hadfield later inspired further use of pleading insanity several years later during the case of Colonel Edward Despard. Hadfield was detained in Bethlem Royal Hospital for the rest of his life, save for a short period when he escaped. He was recaptured at Dover attempting to flee to France and was briefly held at Newgate Prison before being transferred to the new insane asylum Bethlehem Hospital (or Bedlam, as it was known). He died there of tuberculosis in 1841.
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George III
(George William Frederick; 4 June 1738 – 29 January 1820) was King of Great Britain and King of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until the union of these two countries on 1 January 1801, after which he was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until his death. He was concurrently Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg and prince-elector of Hanover in the Holy Roman Empire until his promotion to King of Hanover on 12 October 1814. He was the third British monarch of the House of Hanover, but unlike his two predecessors he was born in Britain and spoke English as his first language. Despite his long life, he never visited Hanover.
George III's long reign was marked by a series of military conflicts involving his kingdoms, much of the rest of Europe, and places further afield in Africa, the Americas and Asia. Early in his reign, Great Britain defeated France in the Seven Years' War, becoming the dominant European power in North America and India. However, many of its American colonies were soon lost in the American Revolutionary War, which led to the establishment of the United States. A series of wars against revolutionary and Napoleonic France, over a twenty-year period, finally concluded in the defeat of Napoleon in 1815.
In the latter half of his life, George III suffered from recurrent and, eventually, permanent mental illness. Medical practitioners were baffled by this at the time, although it is now generally thought that he suffered from the blood disease porphyria. After a final relapse in 1810, a regency was established, and George III's eldest son, George, Prince of Wales, ruled as Prince Regent. On George III's death, the Prince Regent succeeded his father as George IV. Historical analysis of George III's life has gone through a "kaleidoscope of changing views" which have depended heavily on the prejudices of his biographers and the sources available to them.
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