|
Date: |
|
Description: | A silver shilling of King Edward VI's Third Period (1550-3), initial mark tun (1551-3), from the London mint.The coin has been augmented with a silver rim to permit it to fulfil some non-currency purpose and as a result it is significantly overweight. At 9.43g, it is well above the official weight for a shilling of 6g in the late 16th and 17th centuries: most shillings in regular use were significantly under 6g. As a result, it would not have survived in currency in its present state as a piece of money. The coin itself is quite worn, so it seems unlikely that the rim was there to act as a mount for jewellery purposes. The altered coin might have been intended to serve as a counter, since in some cases high-status sets of reckoning counters were made up by using numbers of actual silver coins in a silver cylinder or box - adding the rim might have both rendered the coins being used as distinctive and also made them better fitted to their container. Alternatively, the coin was altered to be set aside for use in a popular pastime, similar to shove-halfpenny, which is documented for the Tudor and Stuart periods - the utilisation of the broad and distinctive shillings of Edward VI in this game is specifically recorded. A very similar coin was reported in 2007, of the initial mark Y (1550-1), and similarly worn and with a rim, with a weight in that case of 7.11g.
Original Image | Publisher: | http://finds.org.uk | Source: | Portable Antiquities | Identifier: | http://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/r... | Go to resource |
|
More Like this...
-
Coin
A silver shilling of King…
-
Coin
Post-Medieval silver coin: Shilling of…
-
COIN
Post-Medieval silver coin: Shilling of…
-
COIN
Silver penny of Edward VI,…
-
COIN
A worn and corroded post-medieval…
-
COIN
Silver shilling of Edward VI,…
-
COIN
Silver shilling of Edward VI,…
-
COIN
A base silver penny of…
-
COIN
A base silver penny of…
-
COIN
A silver washed copper alloy…
|