Letter of Isaac Royall.
‘A pretty good price for a silver watch,’ was the observation made by a banker who read the following letter of the Medford loyalist Isaac Royall, adding ‘seventy-five pounds, why! that's about four hundred dollars.’But the amount was in ‘old tenor’ and about seven and one half times that of ‘lawful money’ in 1761.
So fifty dollars (on the latter basis) would seem not an undue figure for the day of Colonel Royall, but the old fashioned time-piece would suffer in comparison with the modern Waltham watch.
Collector Robert Hale is supposed to have been His Majesty's customs officer at the port of Newbury, Mass. [p. 65] The kindly offer of assistance to his grandson and namesake speaks well for the one who a few years later, misunderstood by his townsmen, became an exile.
His letter, till recently in the possession of the late General Lawrence, may now be seen at the Royall House.
Several pages of the History of Medford may well be read in relation to the depreciated currency of those days.
When lawful money came in one wrote:
And now Old Tenor fare you well,
No more such tattered rags we'll tell,
Now dollars pass, and are made free,
It is a year of jubilee.
Of short duration however, for the Continental currency was even worse depreciated.
