1 Angel - Mary

Mary I's angels are distinguished from her father's and brother's issues by the inclusion of her name on the obverse — a deliberate assertion of queenship at a moment when a sole-regnant female monarch was constitutionally unprecedented in England. Parliament had to construct new legal frameworks simply to accommodate her authority. The angel denomination itself carried quasi-mystical weight in Tudor currency; monarchs used gold angels in the ceremonial "touching for the king's evil," believed to cure scrofula.

Spink 2490 places this issue firmly in the first year of her reign, before the Philip and Mary joint coinage began in 1554.