Watch List notes:

Great Britain. Unite (20 Shillings), 1642. S.2732; Fr-259; North-2386. Charles I, 1625-1649. Very scarce Civil War issue. Oxford mint. Initial mark, 1 pellet. Rare. Obverse: Crowned half-length figure ("tall narrow bust" variety) of king left holding sword. Reverse: Declaration in three wavy lines, date below. An exceptionally fine example of this Civil War classic, struck on a broad (slightly wavy) flan allowing for full legends and even most of the reverse border. The royal portrait is unusually clear and well detailed. The strike on the reverse is evenly impressed, although there is some doubling in the Declaration's letters. On the second quadrant of the reverse appears a long strike-through (not a scratch). The cataloguer sees only a hint of rub, and beautiful gold toning. It would be difficult to find a finer example of this type. PCGS graded AU-53. WINGS. Estimate Value $7,000 - 9,000
This classic gold coin, worth 20 shillings when it was minted, appears to be one of the nicest extant coins of its kind made during the English Civil War. When war first began, King Charles fled to Oxford to escape Oliver Cromwell's army. The king quickly established a temporary royal mint there. The famous college town served as Charles's headquarters and principal source of money from 1642 to 1646. The mint at Oxford, and in succession the other regional mints, was quickly assembled as the king moved from one fortified locale to another. Money to fight the war proved difficult to obtain, for both sides. The king's provincial mints primarily served the purpose of converting gold and silver in other forms (jewelry, the so-called "college plate," and of course older coins) into new money asserting Charles's kingship. It was quickly paid out to his loyal soldiers as well as to suppliers of food and materiel. These coins are not siege coins, but almost all of them, made at all the temporary mints, met exactly the same fate-after the Civil War ended, they tended to be melted in order to make newer coins.

The famous "declaration" which appears on this and other Oxford coins reads in full Latin or sometimes abbreviated as follows: REL(IGIO) PROT(ESTANTIUM), LEG(ES) ANG(LIAE), LIB(ERTAS) PARL(IAMENTI). This legend translates to mean "The religion of the Protestants, the laws of England, the liberty of Parliament." Why was it used on such coins? The words form the essence of King Charles's declaration of his royal status at Wellington on September 18, 1642. It was his manifesto in defiance of his own Parliament. It was his promise to his subjects to rule fairly but to retain his traditional powers, despite the rise of other sentiments in Parliament and among some of his own nobility. In effect it was a declaration of war. It was propaganda, but it offered both hopeful promise and courage to the king's loyal followers and troops. His enemies of course claimed at least the last two objectives as their very reason for chasing the king from his seat of power at London. The ensuing war occurred in two parts, and armies opposed each other in battles across the kingdom, but within seven years of the minting of the royal gold coin we see in this lot Charles was captured, imprisoned, tried for treason, and at last executed in January of 1649. Those who named themselves the Commonwealth of England surely believed it to be the end of the ancient divine right of kings and of the Stuarts, but they were wrong. Their experiment in republicanism failed with the death of their military hero, Oliver Cromwell, but in fact the Civil War did change England forever. Upon the Restoration in 1660, when Charles I's son returned from exile in France, the nation became parliamentarian in both name and power. Never again would a king of England rule with absolute power. He had relinquished the sword he is depicted as holding on this coin!