1/2 Stiver 'half vuurijzer' - Philip the Handsome, Regency

Philip the Handsome was barely ten years old when this coin was struck — his mother Mary of Burgundy had died in 1482 after a riding accident, leaving the Habsburg inheritance in the hands of Maximilian of Austria as regent. Maximilian's regency was deeply unpopular in Flanders, and the Flemish cities spent much of this period in open revolt against him, at one point actually imprisoning him in Bruges in 1488. The half vuurijzer was issued under that fractious regency government, which explains the unusual administrative designation of the period in the references.