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1770 STEPHEN HOPKINS Dec. of Independence Signer Counterfeiting Related Document

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:1,000.00 USD Estimated At:1,400.00 - 1,800.00 USD
1770 STEPHEN HOPKINS Dec. of Independence Signer Counterfeiting Related Document
Autographs
1770 Stephen Hopkins

Declaration of Independence Signer

Signed Document as Chief Justice RI Supreme Court

Important Crime of “Counterfeiting” Warrant for the

“passing in Payment certain false & counterfeit Coin”
STEPHEN HOPKINS (1707-1785). Signer of the Declaration of Independence for Rhode Island; Member of 1st Continental Congress; (Four-Time) 4 x Governor of Rhode Island; Author of the First Anti-Slavery Law in the United States; Chief Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court; 1st Chancellor of Brown University; Speaker of the Rhode Island General Assembly.
October 2, 1770-Dated Rare Colonial Period “Counterfeiting” related content Manuscript Document Signed, “Step. Hopkins” as Superior Court Judge on a Warrant for the Arrest of William Reynolds of Exeter, Kings County (now Washington County), Rhode Island, 2 pages (back to back), measuring 7.5” x 6”, Very Good. Written in bold brown ink on laid watermarked period paper, some tone and minor paper loss along the folds where worn, yet otherwise intact and with an unaffected clear signature. This important “Counterfeiting” related legal warrant reads, after the intro, in full:

“Whereas William Reynolds of Exeter in the County above Stands charged before four Justices, assigned as well to take Assises as to hold Pleas before us in our Superior Court of Judicature Court of Assise & General Goal Delivery in & throughout our Colony of Rhode Island with making, uttering & passing in Payment certain false & counterfeit Coin to diverse of our liege Subjects knowing the same to be such. We therefore Command you the said Sheriff immediately to seize the Body of him the said William and him safely convey to our Goal in South Kingston. And you the said Goal Keeper are commanded to receive the said William into your Goal under your Care and him safely keep until he be from thence delivered by due course of Law. Hereof fail not at your Peril. - Witness Stephen Hopkins Esq. at South Kingston this second day of October in the Tenth year of our Reign AD 1770 -- (Signed) Step. Hopkins C Judge.”

In addition to the importance and rarity of a “Stephen Hopkins” signature, this document is of value to numismatists because of its mention of Counterfeit Coins. William Reynolds was a silversmith who fell in with a gang of counterfeiters who produced fake moidores, half joes, and dollars. The gang (including Reynolds per the above), was arrested and tried. One member was sentenced to stand an hour in pillory, have the letter R branded on both cheeks, to have his ears cropped, and to pay a fine of 600 Pounds and costs. Reynolds did not contest his case and threw himself on the mercy of the court, but he received a similar sentence, only with a smaller fine. On October 26, 1770 some 3,000 people turned out to witness the sentence of Branding and Ears Cropped being carried out. “Tis Death To Counterfeit” may not have applied in Reynold’s case, but the punishment shamed and marked him for life. Amazing content, with the results fully known and documented.
Stephen Hopkins (March 7, 1707 – July 13, 1785) was a Governor of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, a Chief Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He was from a prominent Rhode Island family, the grandson of William Hopkins who served the colony for 40 years as Deputy, Assistant, Speaker of the House of Deputies, and Major.

His great grandfather Thomas Hopkins was an original settler of Providence Plantation, sailing from England in 1635 with his cousin Benedict Arnold who became the first governor of the Rhode Island colony under the Royal Charter of 1663.

In 1770, Hopkins once again became Chief Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court and, during this tenure, became a principal player in the colony's handling of the 1772 Gaspee Affair, when a group of irate Rhode Island citizens boarded a British revenue vessel and burned it to the waterline.

In 1774, he was given an additional important responsibility as one of Rhode Island's two delegates to the First Continental Congress—his former rival Samuel Ward being the other. Hopkins had become well known in the thirteen colonies ten years earlier when he published a pamphlet entitled "The Rights of Colonies Examined" which was critical of British Parliament and its taxation policies.

Hopkins signed the Declaration of Independence in the summer of 1776 with worsening palsy in his hands. He signed it by holding his right hand with his left and saying, "My hand trembles, but my heart does not." He served in the Continental Congress until September 1776, when failing health forced him to resign.

He was a strong backer of the College of the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations (later named Brown University) and became the institution's first chancellor. He died in Providence in 1785 at the age of 78, and is buried in the North Burial Ground there. Hopkins has been called Rhode Island's greatest statesman.