12 Pence - Charles Ormond: Siege coinage

Ormond money, as this series is collectively known, was produced in Dublin Castle under the authority of James Butler, the Marquess of Ormond, as Royalist forces loyal to Charles I found themselves cut off from the English mint during the Irish Confederate Wars. The silver came largely from melted plate — church vessels, household goods, whatever could be surrendered — hammered into crude uniface or lozenge-shaped pieces and valued by weight rather than by any conventional minting standard.

The 1643–44 dating brackets the period before Ormond's controversial decision to conclude the Cessation with the Catholic Confederacy, a truce that scandalized Protestant opinion in both Ireland and England.