Revenue Stamps

 

Stamp duty was introduced in England in 1694 during the reign of William And Mary for the purpose of funding costly wars. Specifically, the Stamp Act was introduced as 'An Act for granting to their Majesties several duties upon vellum, parchment and paper, for four years, towards carrying on the war against France'. The Stamp Office was established to collect the six rates of duty; 1d, 6d, 1shilling, 2s6d, 5s and 40shillings which would be applied to various legal and financial documents by embossing. Each embossed stamp was a different shape to prevent any possibility of fraud by simply altering the value.

 

Here is a scan of a few such revenues from my small collection:

 

 

The bottom right example shows a triple of the common 6d value used for affidavits, writs, leases, passports and marine charters. The triple example indicates two additional duty increases and was therefore used between 1714 and 1757.

 

The top right example dates from 1783 and represents six duty increases, the duty now totalling 6shillings (you have to add up all of the values embossed on the stamp to get the total value; VI PENCE VI PENCE VI PENCE 1 SHILLIG around the top of the stamp and 1 SHILLG VI PENCE 1 SHILLING at the bottom).

 

Documents were also produced on vellum and parchment which are animal skins and did not take to being embossed. Therefore, another method was required to attach embossed duty stamps, this method was called escutcheoning. It consisted of a using a separate piece of paper, called the escutcheon, and affixing it to the vellum or parchment document with an adhesive  and then embossing the escutcheon. But it was soon discovered that this escutcheon could be easily removed and re-used for fraudulent purposes. Therefore, a new method was required and this consisted of using an additional metal strip (used like a wide staple) to affix the escutcheon by making two slits through the escutcheon and document and the metal strip applied like a staple with the ends folded back behind the document. The escutcheon and metal strip are then embossed and a label applied on the back of the document over the ends of the metal strip as a further security device. The label bearing the Royal Cypher of the reigning monarch and are hence known as cypher labels. These are sometimes called the forerunners of the printed postage stamp. An example of an escutcheon type stamp can be seen in the top left and a cyher label can be seen next to it.

 

I'll post again later on this subject.