1 Farthing - James I 'Lennox' issue

The Lennox farthing was produced under a patent granted to Ludovic Stuart, 2nd Duke of Lennox, one of James I's closest Scottish favorites, as part of the crown's broader strategy of licensing base-metal coinage to private patentees rather than operating the mint at royal expense. Ireland was flooded with such issues precisely because the crown had little interest in absorbing the cost of small denomination coinage for a peripheral territory. Lennox died in 1624, and the patent passed almost immediately to other hands, making his name on the issue largely nominal by the time striking was underway.