Roma Numismatics Ltd
Auction XIX 26-27 Mar 2020
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Great Britain, Mary (1553-1554) AV Sovereign. Tower (London) mint, 1553. MARIA : (pomegranate) : D' : G' : ANG' • FRA Z : HIB' : REGINA : M : D : LIII, queen enthroned facing, holding orb and sceptre, portcullis at feet / A : DNO' (pomegranate) FACTV' • EST : ISTV' • Z : EST : MIRA' • IN : OCVL' : NRIS' : ("this is Lord's doing and is marvellous in our eyes"), shield of arms at centre of Tudor rose. Friedberg 192; SCBC 2488; N. 1956; Schneider 704. 15.15g, 43mm, 5h.
Near Extremely Fine; almost undetectable edge damage at 1h, well-struck with a strong portrait of 'Bloody Mary'. Rare.
Acquired from Stanley Gibbons (Guernsey) Limited, prior to 2017 (£24,100).
This beautifully engraved portrait presents Queen Mary in regal splendour, offering an alternative to the notorious legend of 'Bloody' Mary and her failed crusade against Protestantism. The present type was minted at the inception of Mary's short reign, a time of early popularity when the queen received a warm welcome in London: R. M. Fisher summarises contemporary accounts of 'the excitement and relief at the accession of Queen Mary...London went wild, with choirs singing, organs playing and bells ringing' (Grey Friar Chronicle and Two London Chronicles in 'The Reformation of Church and Chapel', 1979, p.237). As the year progressed, however, Mary's proposed marriage to Philip II of Spain started to incite bitter resentments. The belief began to spread that, as Simon Renard wrote to Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, the royal couple 'intended to enrich foreigners by opening the gates of the country to them and impoverish its unfortunate inhabitants' (CSP Spanish, 11:347, 8 November 1553), and John Proctor cited the marriage as a motivation for Wyatt's rebellion (History of Wyat's Rebellion, 1555, pp. 208-9). The present type, minted before the contentious marriage, captures a time of relative harmony in the queen's tumultuous reign.
The reverse legend, 'this is Lord's doing and is marvellous in our eyes', provides a typical articulation of the monarch's divine right to rule. Such a sentiment was echoed by Cardinal Pole in his letter to Mary, also in 1553, which emphatically represented her accession as a holy miracle, a wondrous event independent of human agency (cited in E. Duffy, Fires of Faith, 2010, p.37). However, Mary's religious zeal and her increasingly oppressive Catholic restoration had tragic consequences: over 280 protestants were burned from February 1555 to November 1558. This period constituted the most intense religious persecution of its kind in sixteenth-century Europe, a time of deep division which saw the future queen Elizabeth imprisoned by Mary in the very Tower at which this present type was minted (Duffy, Fires of Faith, 2010, p.7).
Rich dynastic symbols in the coin design affirm the continuity between Mary's reign and that of her father Henry VIII and half-brother Edward VI. At the feet of the enthroned monarch lies a portcullis: this type of latticed gate was used in fortifications like the Tower of London and adopted as the heraldic badge of the House of Beaufort, to which the first Tudor monarch, Henry VII, belonged. Ancestral Tudor emblems also dominate the reverse: a splendid Tudor rose acts as a backdrop to the shield of arms. As royal badge of the Tudor house, this rose represented unity between the Lancastrian and Yorkist Houses following the marriage of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York and celebrated the royal lineage of Mary on her coinage. The pomegranate mint mark not only evoked the classical-era associations with fertility appropriate to a childless queen, but also closely identified Mary with her mother, Catherine of Aragon. Historically used to display Catholic triumph over the Moors in 1492 as an emblem on the Spanish royal arms, the pomegranate, entwined with the Tudor rose under a single crown, was illustrated on the manuscript presented by Thomas More to Catherine and Henry upon their coronation (British Library, Cotton MS Titus D.iv, fo. 12V). Mary's revival of the pomegranate symbol and her use of the Tudor rose on the present coin thus made explicit her dual royal parentage. In fact, the relationship between the queen and her Tudor family had been fraught: after King Henry divorced her mother, Mary had even been reduced to serve as lady-in-waiting to Anne Boleyn's daughter and was only allowed back into court favour in 1536 after acknowledging her own illegitimacy. However, the dynastic symbolism of the current type obscures the historically unstable reality of Mary's legitimacy and instead celebrates her royal lineage.
As Mary met her death after only five years as queen, this type forms part of a fairly limited coin production during her reign. In a proclamation released soon after her succession, Mary announced her intention to provide 'coynes as well of gold as of silver of the perfect fineness' (August 20th, 1553 Harl. MSS. 660), an ambition surely satisfied by the 'fineness' of this present type. However, the queen either closed or did not reopen the country mints active under Edward, possibly because her coinage was produced in quantities so limited as to be satisfied by the central mint at the Tower alone (H. Symonds, 'The Coinage of Queen Mary Tudor', 1912). This delicately carved gold type, then, provides a rare and captivating representation of a queen with a greatly controversial reputation, despite the brevity of her reign.
Near Extremely Fine; almost undetectable edge damage at 1h, well-struck with a strong portrait of 'Bloody Mary'. Rare.
Acquired from Stanley Gibbons (Guernsey) Limited, prior to 2017 (£24,100).
This beautifully engraved portrait presents Queen Mary in regal splendour, offering an alternative to the notorious legend of 'Bloody' Mary and her failed crusade against Protestantism. The present type was minted at the inception of Mary's short reign, a time of early popularity when the queen received a warm welcome in London: R. M. Fisher summarises contemporary accounts of 'the excitement and relief at the accession of Queen Mary...London went wild, with choirs singing, organs playing and bells ringing' (Grey Friar Chronicle and Two London Chronicles in 'The Reformation of Church and Chapel', 1979, p.237). As the year progressed, however, Mary's proposed marriage to Philip II of Spain started to incite bitter resentments. The belief began to spread that, as Simon Renard wrote to Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, the royal couple 'intended to enrich foreigners by opening the gates of the country to them and impoverish its unfortunate inhabitants' (CSP Spanish, 11:347, 8 November 1553), and John Proctor cited the marriage as a motivation for Wyatt's rebellion (History of Wyat's Rebellion, 1555, pp. 208-9). The present type, minted before the contentious marriage, captures a time of relative harmony in the queen's tumultuous reign.
The reverse legend, 'this is Lord's doing and is marvellous in our eyes', provides a typical articulation of the monarch's divine right to rule. Such a sentiment was echoed by Cardinal Pole in his letter to Mary, also in 1553, which emphatically represented her accession as a holy miracle, a wondrous event independent of human agency (cited in E. Duffy, Fires of Faith, 2010, p.37). However, Mary's religious zeal and her increasingly oppressive Catholic restoration had tragic consequences: over 280 protestants were burned from February 1555 to November 1558. This period constituted the most intense religious persecution of its kind in sixteenth-century Europe, a time of deep division which saw the future queen Elizabeth imprisoned by Mary in the very Tower at which this present type was minted (Duffy, Fires of Faith, 2010, p.7).
Rich dynastic symbols in the coin design affirm the continuity between Mary's reign and that of her father Henry VIII and half-brother Edward VI. At the feet of the enthroned monarch lies a portcullis: this type of latticed gate was used in fortifications like the Tower of London and adopted as the heraldic badge of the House of Beaufort, to which the first Tudor monarch, Henry VII, belonged. Ancestral Tudor emblems also dominate the reverse: a splendid Tudor rose acts as a backdrop to the shield of arms. As royal badge of the Tudor house, this rose represented unity between the Lancastrian and Yorkist Houses following the marriage of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York and celebrated the royal lineage of Mary on her coinage. The pomegranate mint mark not only evoked the classical-era associations with fertility appropriate to a childless queen, but also closely identified Mary with her mother, Catherine of Aragon. Historically used to display Catholic triumph over the Moors in 1492 as an emblem on the Spanish royal arms, the pomegranate, entwined with the Tudor rose under a single crown, was illustrated on the manuscript presented by Thomas More to Catherine and Henry upon their coronation (British Library, Cotton MS Titus D.iv, fo. 12V). Mary's revival of the pomegranate symbol and her use of the Tudor rose on the present coin thus made explicit her dual royal parentage. In fact, the relationship between the queen and her Tudor family had been fraught: after King Henry divorced her mother, Mary had even been reduced to serve as lady-in-waiting to Anne Boleyn's daughter and was only allowed back into court favour in 1536 after acknowledging her own illegitimacy. However, the dynastic symbolism of the current type obscures the historically unstable reality of Mary's legitimacy and instead celebrates her royal lineage.
As Mary met her death after only five years as queen, this type forms part of a fairly limited coin production during her reign. In a proclamation released soon after her succession, Mary announced her intention to provide 'coynes as well of gold as of silver of the perfect fineness' (August 20th, 1553 Harl. MSS. 660), an ambition surely satisfied by the 'fineness' of this present type. However, the queen either closed or did not reopen the country mints active under Edward, possibly because her coinage was produced in quantities so limited as to be satisfied by the central mint at the Tower alone (H. Symonds, 'The Coinage of Queen Mary Tudor', 1912). This delicately carved gold type, then, provides a rare and captivating representation of a queen with a greatly controversial reputation, despite the brevity of her reign.