1 Gulden - Willem II

Willem II came to the Dutch throne in 1840 following his father Willem I's abdication under pressure from the Belgian crisis and mounting domestic opposition. The constitutional reforms of 1840 and — more dramatically — 1848 fundamentally restructured the monarchy, shifting real power to parliament. The 1848 revision, driven partly by the revolutionary tremors sweeping Europe, was adopted with unusual speed; Willem II reportedly reversed his conservative position overnight, famously remarking that he had gone to bed a conservative and woken up a liberal.

The .945 fineness used here was a Dutch standard carried over from earlier Napoleonic-era monetary reorganization and was already considered high by contemporary European practice.