1/2 Groat - Charles I Briot's milled issue

Nicholas Briot, a French die-engraver who had worked at the Paris Mint, came to England in 1625 frustrated by the conservative resistance to mechanized minting on the Continent. He spent years lobbying the Tower Mint before receiving a limited patent in 1631 to produce coins by his screw-press method. The result was dramatically more precise than the hammered coinage it ran alongside — sharper, rounder, more uniform — which made the Tower moneyers deeply uncomfortable.

The patent was narrow and politically fraught. Briot's milled output was restricted in volume and eventually curtailed under pressure from entrenched Tower interests. The 1631–32 window represents the entirety of his first milled English production run.