2 Denier - Philip II

Philip II of Spain held the County of Namur as part of the Spanish Netherlands, but 1579 was the year the Union of Arras formally realigned the southern Catholic provinces — Namur among them — back under Habsburg loyalty, splitting definitively from the rebellious northern provinces that would form the Dutch Republic. Small copper deniers of this type circulated in a region that had just chosen sides in a conflict that would grind on for another seventy years.