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1/2 Crown - Charles I Tower mint, under Parliament
| Issuer | Tower Mint, London |
|---|---|
| Year | 1643-1646 |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Diameter | Log in to see details |
| Thickness | 1.5 mm |
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| Obverse description | Equestrian effigy of King Charles I advancing to the left, depicted on horseback with an upright sword held in the right hand and a billowing cloak, the whole set against a plain field with no ground line, enclosed within a beaded border. The execution reflects the characteristically cruder workmanship of the Parliamentary issue period at the Tower Mint. The royal Latin legend is disposed around the periphery, interrupted by punctuation stops and abbreviation marks. The overall engraving quality is noticeably inferior to earlier Tower Mint issues, consistent with the disrupted production conditions of the Civil War era. |
|---|---|
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| Mintage | ND (1643-1644) - mm. P in brackets (98) - ND (1644-1645) - mm. R in brackets (112) - ND (1645) - mm. Eye (81) - ND (1645-1646) - mm. Sun (120) - |
| Additional information |
After Parliament seized the Tower of London in 1642, it continued striking coinage in Charles I's name — a pragmatic fiction that kept commerce moving while the Civil War bled on. The mint's output during these years served a government actively fighting its king, yet bore his image without apparent irony. Royalist mints at Oxford, Bristol, and Shrewsbury were simultaneously doing the same, producing competing issues of nominally identical authority.
Spink 2778 covers a span of dies across the 1643–1646 window, and individual pieces can often be attributed more narrowly by mintmark sequence — the sun, sceptre, and eye marks each corresponding to specific years within that range.