Issued in 1746 by the Cumberland Society, it includes a bare head portrait of the duke facing right to the obverse and a scene of Apollo standing afront a speared dragon verso. The signature of the medallist Richard Yeo appears bottom left.
The Cumberland Society was formed on the day after Culloden by senior officers who had been present at the battle. The original membership of 27 bore a correlation to the duke’s age of 26, and one further member was to be elected each year. There were 54 members by the time the last member, Captain Ross, was elected in 1766 (the year following Cumberland’s death).
The society authorised the wearing of the medal, which was suspended around the neck from a crimson ribbon with green edges – the earliest recorded precise definition of a medal ribbon. The auction house surmises that fewer than 60 medals were ever struck and points to only two similar medals sold at auction in recent memory, the last at Christie’s South Kensington in 2011 (£20,000).
Estimate £25,000-30,000.
