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So I came across this teaspoon with a very strange hallmark that appears to be the letter "V" in cursive script.
All attempts to find a letter "V" date mark have failed, and, just by coincidence, very few date marks use the letter "V"
So then I read about Timothy Conway who used a harp without a crown to show his anti-royalist attitude.
He then turned pro-royalist and died with a large pension given to him by the King.

Does any of this make sense?

The hallmark is a lion passant, so English and not Irish. The "V" is in a much smaller punch so would not be part of the hallmarks but presumably a separate mark added for who knows what reason. A mid 18th century teaspoon would typically bear just the maker's mark and the lion passant. One tends to assume the spoon maker will be Thos Chawner but a picture of the whole spoon might confirm whether the style is right for his dates.

I got distracted by the strange "V" and didn't see the forest for the trees, a mistake on my part.
Also here are the pics as requested, and the piece is most likely Thomas Chawner, which was my first thought, but then I got distracted by the "V"

I did at first suspect Thomas Chawner, but then all the hallmark examples had the pellet inbetween the T and the C
and also the T and the C in my example are slightly different. But perhaps this is simply a very early example of the
Thomas Chawner maker's mark which perhaps is missing from the register book from the mid-1700's that disappeared?

Chawner was free in 1762. Grimwade's biog suggests he would have had a mark in a missing register. However, Grimwade also notes, but does not illustrate, a mark without a pellet entered in 1775. A spoon of this pattern could be 1760s or 1770s as I guess you appreciate, so either way I'd be inclined to stick with Chawner.

Incidentally, I did wonder whether the V might be an import mark standing for foreign from somewhere with a Germanic language, but that is just a wild guess.

The 'wild guess' is spot on. 'V' for the Dutch word ‘vreemd’.

See: http://www.925-1000.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=32028

Trev.

Correct!!! The mysterious "V" mark is a Dutch import mark.
Thanks for the information about the absence of pellet.
I'm thinking 1760's given all the examples I have seen.
Perhaps this is the physical proof of that note in Grimwade.