1/4 Daalder `Burgundian` - Philip II

Philip II inherited the Netherlands from his father Charles V in 1555 and almost immediately set about dismantling the relative autonomy the provinces had enjoyed. The Duke of Alba's arrival in 1567 with a Spanish army — and the establishment of the Council of Troubles, which sentenced thousands to death or exile — created the precise political crisis during which these coins were struck. Minting continued even as open revolt hardened into what would become the Eighty Years' War.

The "Burgundian" designation refers to the dynastic tradition Philip inherited rather than any geographical claim, linking the coinage backward to the Valois Dukes of Burgundy who had first unified the Low Countries nearly a century earlier.