1/4 Dukat - Frederik III Cross monogram type 3

Frederik III's absolute monarchy was formalized by the Kongeloven of 1665 — the most sweeping consolidation of royal power in Danish history — but these quarter ducats were struck in the years immediately preceding it, during the political maneuvering that made that law possible. The Estates' surrender of noble tax privilege in 1660 set the machinery in motion. These coins circulated through a Denmark still exhaling from the catastrophic wars with Sweden that had stripped the country of its southernmost provinces under the Peace of Roskilde in 1658.