Carolus - Nicolas II of Châtelet

Vauvillers, a minor lordship in the Haute-Saône, retained the right to strike silver coinage well into the sixteenth century — an increasingly anachronistic privilege by the 1550s, when the French crown was systematically suppressing feudal minting rights. Nicolas II de Châtelet issued this carolus during a narrow window before royal ordinances effectively ended independent seigneurial coinage in the region. The carolus denomination itself had been introduced under Charles VIII and remained a small-change workhorse, but examples attributable to lords of this rank and obscurity are genuinely uncommon survivors.