Bulletins of the Historical Commission of
South Carolina. — No. 3

The Mace
OF THE
House of Representatives OF THE
State of South Carolina

By A. S. SALLEY,

Jr.

Secretary of the Comnpission

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Printed for the Commission
by The State Company
Columbia, S, C.
1917
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Bulletins of the Historical Commission of
South Carolina. — No. 3

The Mace
OF THE
House of Representatives OF THE
State of South Carolina

By A. S. SALLEY, Jr.
Secretary of tlie Commission

Printed for the Commission
by The State Company
Columbia, S. C,
1917

CtSlAOS

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The mace which is used by the House of Rep
resentatives of South Carolina as the emblem of its
authority was made in London in 1756, as shown
by the hallmarks thereon, by Magdalen Fehne, a
plate worker then well known in that city, and
was purchased by the Commons House of Assem
bly of the province of South Carolina for ninety
guineas. On one of the panels is the Royal arms of
Great Britain, on another the arms of the House of
Hanover, on another the arms of the province of
South Carolina and other insignia are on other
panels. It is of solid silver, with a gold burnishing.
It very much resembles the mace of the common
council of Norwich, England. So far as the writer
is able to learn it is the only mace in use in the
United States that antedates the Revolution. It
is said that some fragments of the mace of the
House of Burgesses of Virginia are now preserved
in that State as relics. In 1773 Josiah Quincy, Jr.,
a distinguished citizen of Massachusetts, visited
Charles Town (now Charleston), and on March 19,
made the following entry in his diary :
Spent all the morning in hearing debates in the House
and had an opportunity of hearing the best speakers in the
Province. The first thing done at the meeting is to bring
the mace — a very superb and elegant one, which cost 90
guineas — and lay it on the table before the Speaker.
During the Revolution this mace was appro
priated by some British sympathizers who subse
quently offered it for sale to the House of Assenibly
of the Bahama Islands. The records of that body,
at Nassau, New Providence, show that on June 25,
1790: Mr. McKenzie moved that John Wells, Esquire, be
empowered and authorized to purchase from the person or
persons having custody of the silver mace of the late Assem-

bly of the Province of South Carolina and that this House
will provide for any sum or expenses incurred by reason of
said purchase.
The records do not show that any further action
was taken in relation to the mace, but many writers
have assumed that it was purchased, and one
writer has gone so far as to chronicle its wander
ings from South Carolina to the Bahamas, and
another has asserted that "As a matter of fact, it
was about 10 years before the purchase was
effected and appropriation passed to cover the cost
of the mace and the speaker's robe." It will be
observed that the record of Mr. McKenzie 's motion
does not even show whether the mace was in the
Bahama Islands, stiU in South Carohna, or else
where. "As a matter of fact" it was not pur
chased, and the mace now in Nassau and supposed
by many to be the South Carolina mace was made
in London in 1799, as shown by records in London
and by the hallmarks on the mace itself. Harcourt
G. Malcolm, sometime member of the House of
Assembly of the Bahama Islands, and an authority
on such matters in the 3ahama Islands, says, in a
letter to J. S. Churchill, Colonial Secretary of the
Bahama Islands, dated February 23, 1903 :
Last summer when our mace was in London for the pur
pose of being regilded and repaired, it was inspected at the
Assay Office. The officials of that office fixed the date of its
manufacture at 1799, and the records of that office also dis
closed the fact that it had been made by Lewis Pantin, a
small worker, whose address was 62 St. Martin's le Grand,
at present part of the site of the General Postoffice building.
Tbe date given by the Assay Office was also corroborated
by Mr. W, H. St. John Hope, of the Society of Antiquaries.
This is further substantiated by the votes of the House of
Assembly. For on the 8th of December, 1800, the following
item appears on the resolution arrived at in a committee of
the whole house on petitions, estimates and accounts :

"To Alexander C. Wylly, Esquire, for amount paid by him
for a mace, speaker's gown, etc., £269-10-0."
The writer goes on to say that Mr. Wylly had
been Speaker of the House from October 30, 1798,
to November 17, 1800, when it became necessary
to elect a successor to him in consequence of his
absence from the colony; that he had returned to
Nassau on November 28, 1800, and was refunded
the amount which he had paid out for the mace and
robe as described above, and that it seemed "a
plausible suggestion that he brought it with him."
There are some who indulge in silly twaddle
about the South Carolina mace being the mace of
the British House of Commons which Cromwell
referred to as a "bauble." The arms of the House
of Hanover and those of the Province of South
Carolina under Royal government, on two of the
panels of the mace, and the hallmarks thereon, are
sufficient refutation of that claim, but Mr. Malcolm
furnishes some very amusing information as to
similar claims for other maces. He says :
In connection with the "Cromwell bauble" theory, which
I believe exists or has existed in nearly every British West
Indian colony which possesses a mace, I might mention that
Mr. Hope showed me in London last summer a book on
"English Maces" of which he is joint owner. And the part
of this book which treats of the present mace of the House
of Commons apparently proves that that mace is the original
"bauble." It is also interesting to note what Samuel Raw-
son Gardiner, in A History of the Commonwealth
and Protectorate, 1649-60 (London: Longman),
says of the mace of Cromwell's time. He says:
The final words of the scene were not the "Take away
this bauble" of popular tradition, but "What shall we do
with this bauble? Here, take it away 1" Capt. Scott removed
the mace whose fate was so little regarded that it lay for
many subsequent months in the private house of Worsley,

the commander of the detachment which carried out the
coup d'etat.
Prom the time that the mace of the House of
Representatives of South Carolina disappeared
from its accustomed place in the old State House
in Charles Town during the latter part of the Rev
olution, when the British occupied Charles Town,
to 1819, its whereabouts was known to only a very
few. In 1819, when the Hon. Langdon Cheves, of
South Carolina, went to Philadelphia, as president
of the Bank of the United States, he found it in a
vault of the bank and restored it to its rightful
owners. It is one of the surviving evidences of the
broad culture of the people of the province of
South Carolina.

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