1⁄48 Thaler - Francis Arnold

Francis Arnold of Wolff-Metternich zur Gracht ruled the Bishopric of Münster from 1707 until his death in 1718, a tenure shaped largely by the aftermath of the Nine Years' War and the ongoing financial strain of rebuilding ecclesiastical authority in Westphalia. Small-denomination silver fractions like this 1/48 Thaler were workhorses of local commerce — the bishop's mints produced them in quantity precisely because larger denominations were being hoarded or exported against the unstable currency conditions of the early eighteenth century.