| Description | The documents listed under this head may once have been in several separate files. Under M. R. Boulton’s arrangement they were placed in two portfolios and put in Box I. iii ("Special Subjects—Coinages"). According to the Assay Office’s Inventory, 1922, the titles on the portfolios was as follows: "Coinage, French, 1791, 1793. Monnerons. Swediaur, Bordices, Co. Journy to France. Les Eaux du Paris, 1786, 1787." and "Coinage, French. Monnerons. Swediaur, Bordices, & Co. Senovert, 1791 to 1803." The documents relating to "Journy to France. Les Eaux du Paris, 1786, 1787" were originally from one of Matthew Boulton’s files titled "Paris" and they have been listed there.
It is not clear how the documents were divided between the two portfolios. They are now arranged in the following chronological sequences:
Monnérons Frères.
Francis Swediaur.
All the letters issued by the Monnérons are in French. All the copy letters are press-copies, unless stated otherwise.
The correspondence between Francis Swediaur and Matthew Boulton was conducted in circumstances which rendered secrecy imperative. Many of Swediaur’s letters were directed to "Andrew Smith," care of, or "at," Matthew Boulton, this being apparently merely a pseudonym for Boulton. Several of them also include passages written with sympathetic ink, which were "developed" on receipt to make them legible. This process is described in Swediaur’s letter of 21 Apr. 1791. Swediaur’s letters from February to August 1791 were numbered by him in one sequence; the first four copies of Boulton’s letters are also numbered. Swediaur’s letters of 2 Apr. 1791 and 24 Nov. 1791 show signs of having once been at the top of bundles. |