1 Crown - James VIII Restrike, Pattern

James Francis Edward Stuart — "the Old Pretender" — had this coinage prepared in 1716 in the immediate aftermath of the failed Jacobite rising of 1715, asserting his claim as James VIII of Scotland and III of England from exile in France. The pieces were never circulated; they functioned as diplomatic and propagandistic objects, distributed among sympathizers and foreign courts rather than through any monetary channel. The term "restrike" in the catalog literature reflects later reuse of the original dies, making precise attribution of any given example to 1716 production a genuine specialist problem.