2 Ducats - William V Death

William V of Hesse-Cassel died in September 1637, a landgrave whose reign was consumed almost entirely by the Thirty Years' War. He had kept Hesse-Cassel in the Protestant alliance at enormous cost — Swedish subsidies kept his army in the field, but much of his territory was occupied or devastated by the time he died. Memorial ducat issues of this kind were a standard dynastic practice in the German states, struck in small quantities for distribution among court, clergy, and allied nobility rather than any commercial circulation.

The Schütz reference places this among a small documented group, and surviving examples are infrequently traded.