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1 Crown - Henry VIII Crown of the double-rose
| Issuer | England |
|---|---|
| Year | 1526-1544 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
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| Composition | Gold (.916) |
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| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse script | Latin (uncial) |
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| Reverse description | A crowned quartered royal shield of arms, displaying the arms of France (ancient, with fleurs-de-lis) and England (three lions passant guardant) in alternating quarters, flanked on either side by crowned royal initials H and K for Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon. The shield is of the late Gothic lozenge form, surmounted by an imperial crown of open type. The surrounding legend in uncial Latin reads DEI G' R' AGL' Z FRANC' DNS' HIBERNE', proclaiming Henry's titles as King of England and France and Lord of Ireland by the Grace of God. The design is executed in the bold, flat-relief hammered style consistent with Tower mint production of the first half of the sixteenth century. |
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| Additional information |
Introduced as part of Henry VIII's 1526 currency reform — driven largely by the need to align English gold coinage with continental European standards following chronic undervaluation — this crown represented a deliberate debasement policy that would accelerate dramatically in the "Great Debasement" of 1544–1551. The .916 fineness held here was already a reduction from earlier medieval standards, and Henry's treasury was engineering every adjustment to extract maximum seigniorage revenue from an increasingly strained royal finances.
Struck across multiple mints including London, Canterbury, and York over the nearly two-decade span, die-link studies have identified significant variation across the series. Spink 2273 encompasses several distinct sub-varieties that specialists separate by mintmark sequence.