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Jack Hepler thanking Peter Williams for his Talk.
A HISTORY OF
THE SHILLING by Peter Williams
Edward VI
was anxious
that he should not be succeeded by his elder half-sister, Mary, a
Catholic, and
named Lady Jane Grey in his will to succeed him on the throne. Her reign in 1551 had lasted just 9 days
when she was deposed by Mary 1, who
enjoyed strong popular support. (The
coincidence of two Marys ruling the two neighboring countries at the
same time
caused confusion, hence the naming of the Scot as “Mary, Queen of
Scots”.)
No shillings were minted in now-Protestant England between 1551 and 1554 when Mary, who was Catholic, married Philip of Spain; however Irish shillings with her portrait were minted in 1553 and 1554 before the marriage. After the marriage some shillings were issued with busts of Mary and Philip facing each other, possibly in an attempt to boost his popularity as a Catholic.
Mary also
tried to
convert England back to the Roman church and in the process burned many
Protestants at the stake as heretics.
Her marriage was one of political convenience, however, and
Philip
returned to Spain before she died in 1558.
30 years later, as King of Spain, he launched the ill-fated
Spanish
Armada against England, which was soundly defeated by the English navy
under
Sir Francis Drake.
Elizabeth 1, Mary’s half-sister, ascended the throne in 1558. She restored the Protestant Church and ruled England for the next 45 years, a period of stability that saw England rise to great power and influence.
One of the first events of her reign was the counter-marking of Edward VI shillings to revalue them to their true worth. Shillings counter-marked with a portcullis were revalued to fourpence halfpenny and those with a greyhound countermark to twopence farthing. These coins are very rare.
A major recoinage was undertaken in Elizabeth’s reign and thousands of silver coins were produced. The shilling was no exception, with the date removed from the design, although the mintmark can be used to reveal the year. No shillings were issued between 1562 and 1582 but the next issue in 1552-53 was very large and, as a result, a fair number are to be found in collections.
The reign
of Mary,
Queen of Scots converges with that of Elizabeth, leading to the
subsequent union
of England and Scotland. Mary
was the only surviving legitimate child of King James V of
Scotland.
She was 6 days old when her father died and
she was crowned nine months later. In 1558, she married Francis, Dauphin of
France, who ascended
the French throne as King Francis II in 1559, and Mary became queen consort
of France until she was widowed on 5 December 1560. Mary then returned
to Scotland. Four years later, she married her first
cousin, Henry Stuart, Lord
Darnley.
Their union was
unhappy and in February 1567, there was a huge explosion at their
house, and
Darnley was found dead, apparently strangled, in the garden.
She
soon married the 4th Earl of Bothwell,
who
was almost certainly her lover and generally believed to be Darnley's
murderer.
Following an uprising against the couple, Queen Mary was imprisoned and
forced
to abdicate
in favor of her one-year-old son, King James VI.
After an unsuccessful
attempt to regain the throne, Mary fled to England
seeking the protection of her first cousni-
once-removed, Elizabeth.
Mary had previously claimed
Elizabeth's throne as her own and was considered the legitimate
sovereign of
England by many English Catholics.
Perceiving
her as a threat, Elizabeth had her arrested. After 19 years in custody
in a
number of castles and manor houses in England, she was tried and
executed in
the Tower of London for treason
for her alleged involvement in three plots to
assassinate Elizabeth.
Elizabeth, the
Virgin Queen, died
childless in 1603 and was succeeded by Mary, Queen of Scots’ son. James
VI of
Scotland as James 1 of England,
marking the end of Tudor rule and the beginning of the Stuart dynasty
on the
English throne.
As far as the
coinage goes, there
was very little change during James’s 22 year reign but the shillings
had a
“XII” mark of value in front of the king’s bust on the face of the coin. Some shillings were struck in Welsh silver
with a plume above the shield on the reverse.
Charles
I succeeded
his father in 1625. He had a
tumultuous reign, mainly as a
result of his fervent belief in his own absolute authority, the Divine
Right of
Kings. He found himself embroiled in
several wars, the main ones being 2 Civil Wars against Parliament. After the second civil war he was executed
in 1649. England came under the rule
for 11 years of the Commonwealth with
Oliver Cromwell calling himself the Lord Protector.
The flamboyant society of Charles’s reign was replaced by the
austerity of the Puritans.
During the reign
of Charles I
there was a wide range of styles and mints for the official coinage –
76
according to the Coincraft catalog – but there were also some unusual
provisional
issues made from plates and other silverware in cities and towns that
were
under siege during the civil wars.
The Commonwealth
years saw
shillings minted in considerable quantities; the Cromwell coin is more
common
than others. Cromwell had led the
revolution
that resulted in the Charles I being deposed and executed – he was the
leader
of the anti-Royalist forces. The
obverse of the Cromwell coin has Cromwell’s bust sporting a laurel
wreath, a la
Roman Emperor. The reverse has
Cromwell’s personal cost-of-arms with a crown above it – strange that
as a
fervent anti-monarchist he would have condoned a crown over his image.
Cromwell died in
1659 and after a
short, failed attempt by his son, Richard, to continue the
Commonwealth, the
monarchy was restored in 1660 when Charles
II took back the throne which, theoretically, he inherited upon the
death
of his father in 1649. During his reign milled shillings began to be produced in
very large
numbers, although collecting the series is complicated by the wide
range of
provenance marks and dates, the former indicating the origin of the
metal used
for the coins.
James II, a Catholic, became king upon the death of Charles in 1685. He made strenuous efforts to restore Catholicism but became so unpopular that a group of Protestants invited his daughter, Mary, and her husband, William of Orange, to depose James. They arrived from Holland in 1688 and James abdicated and fled. No changes were made to the coinage between 1685 and 1688.
William and Mary were warmly welcomed as Joint Sovereigns of England, Scotland and Ireland (Mary was heir to the throne and Protestant). Coins, including shillings, minted during their reign show their conjoined busts on the obverse, and have the date around the center of the coin on the reverse, with the intertwined initials W and M between the shields. Mary died in 1694, however, and William continued to rule for the next 7 years until his death in 1701 as William III. In what must still be one of the classic errors in coin and stamp production, the coins issued in 1696 bore the date 1669. During this reign several provincial mints (i.e. other than the Tower, Southwark or London) were in use, and their coins are indicated by a letter under the bust.
One of the provisions of the Bill of Rights, enacted in 1689, was that only Protestants henceforth could ascend the throne, to prevent the restoration of Catholicism, and declaring that in the event that Mary died childless, upon the death of William, the throne should pass to her sister, Anne. As it turned out, William and Mary had no children.
Anne succeeded William upon his death in 1701. There was one
minting of coins during her reign that is
curious. In 1704, coins issued by the
Edinburgh mint, had a plain reverse. By
1700, all of Anne’s children had died, leaving her as the sole Stuart
heir to
the throne. Anxious to subvert any
attempt by James II and his supporters (the Jacobites) to reclaim the
throne,
Parliament passed the Act of Settlement in 1701, before William died,
establishing
that if Anne bore no more children, she would be succeeded by William’s
nearest
Protestant relation. That individual
was the Electress Sophie of Hanover in Germany, who died before Anne;
her grandson,
George, was next in line.
The British Shilling
In 1707 the Act of Union was negotiated between the English and the Scots, forming the Kingdom of Great Britain, a century after the Scottish King James VI became King James I of England. As a result of this union the designation British shilling replaced the English shilling; Scotland retained its own shilling alongside the new British version.
George of Hanover was crowned George I in 1714 when Anne died, establishing the British royal dynasty that has survived to this day and will continue to do so. George I died in 1726 and was succeeded by his son, George II, who ruled until 1760. Both kings spent more time in Germany than in England and their reigns were taken up with putting down the Jacobite rebellion. Shillings were minted throughout these two reigns. An oddity was the LIMA shilling, issued in 1745 and 1746. LIMA under the king’s bust has been thought to indicate that the coin was minted from silver captured by Admiral Anson after his capture of a Spanish galleon in the port of Callao, Peru in 1743. However this has been disputed and recently discounted and the silver used in minting the shilling, and several other denominations, was probably seized from two French privateers in the Atlantic at about the same time.
George II was succeeded by his grandson, George III in 1760. Due to scarcity of fine silver, very few shillings were minted early in his reign.
There are two notable rarities from this reign, however. The first is the Northumberland Shilling of 1763. This was distributed by Hugh, Earl of Northumberland on his installation in Dublin as Viceroy of Ireland. About 150 pounds worth was minted, representing 3000 shillings, a very small mintage.
The second is the Dorrien and Magens shilling of 1798. Several London bankers had acquired about 30000 pounds worth of silver which was sent to the Mint for coining. Unfortunately the Lords of the Committee in Council declared the coins illegal, and the very great majority was melted down. The government may have been concerned that the issue would stimulate a demand for more coins which they would have been powerless to satisfy, as the price of silver was very high.
There was a large issue
of shillings in 1787. There was a small
error, however: the hearts
were left out of the Hanoverian shield in the early editions but the
error was
so small that it was not discovered and corrected for some; both types
were of
equal value. The obverse of both
varieties has either a dot above the king’s head, or no dot, or no dots
on the
obverse at all. Only 4 are known to
exist but if you can acquire one, present day value would be in the
neighborhood of $150,000-$160,000!
The French Revolutionary
Wars from 1792 to
1799, and the Napoleonic Wars
from 1799 to 1815 led to
financial instability in Britain. The
shortage of silver and copper led to a shortage of coins. Paper money
became
legal in 1797
and local tokens were produced by companies and banks all over the
country. National
debt had increased 100% by the start of the 19th century and
a series of bad harvests pushed up food
prices which culminated in riots in 1801 – 1802.
Corn
prices halved at the end of the wars, when trade with Europe
restarted. The Corn Laws
of 1815 were intended to protect the
price of domestic grain, but this only served to keep prices high and
depressed
the domestic market for manufactured goods, because people had to use
all their
money to buy food.
Likewise, European countries which relied on exporting corn to Britain
in order
to buy British manufactured goods were no longer able to do so.
The government needed to find a way to stabilise the currency, and the Great Recoinage of 1816 was the first step in this process. The main aims were the re-introduction of a silver coinage and a change in the gold coinage from the Guinea valued at 21 shillings to the slightly lighter Sovereign worth 20 shillings. The value of the shilling remained unchanged at twelve pence. The Mint was instructed to coin one troy pound ( = 5760 grains) of standard ( 0.925 fine) silver into 66 shillings. The new shillings weighed about 5.7 g and had a diameter of 24 mm., retaining these statistics for the first editions of the 5-pence coin issued between 1971 and 1990 .
After George III’s
reign, the shilling continued to be
minted without dramatic change, its size and weight having been firmly
established in the Great Recoinage.
William IV ruled from 1830 until 1837 and only one shilling type was minted during this time. The 3 in the date usually has a flat top, but some (but not all) proofs have a round top. Therefore the presence of a round top means the coin IS a proof, but a flat top does not necessarily mean it is a circulation issue coin.
In 1920 the silver content was reduced from 92.5% to 50% because of a dramatic rise in the price of silver. This second type was issued from 1920 to 1926. Problems with the alloy because of poor appearance after wear meant a slight change in the alloying additions in 1922 and again in 1927.
In 1927 a new reverse design was issued in proof sets, and then uniquely the 1927 shilling in the new design was issued for circulation. The lion’s posture over the crown was changed from an elongated sideways-stretched depiction to a prouder, more alert one, with the lion facing to the front from a similar sideways stance. This type continued until 1936, the end of George’s reign.
A pattern shilling of Edward VIII does exist but it was never put in circulation, since he abdicated before coronation to marry Wallis Simpson.
The shilling issues of George VI and Elizabeth II are unusual in that two different designs were issued each year (except 1952), an English (sic: British) and a Scottish version. They were not distributed solely in the relevant countries, but circulated equally alongside each other.
The English shilling of George VI has the lion standing left on a large crown, while on the Scottish shilling the lion is facing, holding a sword & scepter flanked by St Andrews Cross and a thistle.
In 1947 the metal used in the minting of the shilling was changed to cupronickel in 1947, the year in which the British Indian Empire dissolved into the independent republic of India and the dominion of Pakistan, which meant that in 1949 “IND IMP” were removed from all British coins.
Because of the high demand for nickel in the Korean War, no 1952 shillings were issued, although extremely rare proofs of the English version do exist.
Elizabeth II succeeded her father in 1952. The English shilling of Elizabeth II has three 'leopards' facing left, in a shield, while the Scottish shilling has a rampant lion.
The last regular issue shillings were minted in 1966. Two years later the new five-pence piece with identical dimensions began to be issued prior to decimalization in 1971, although proof shillings dated 1970 were issued later.
Shillings and 5p coins
circulated together until the end of
1990, when they were superseded by a new smaller 5p coin. Thus ended
the 488
year history of the shilling.
The
shilling in the
vernacular
The British have coined nicknames for some of their currency denominations. The pound carries the name “quid”, the old sixpence coin “tanner”, and the shilling was no exception, glorying in the nickname “bob”. How “bob” came into being is not known. There are theories that say it recognizes Sir Robert Walpole, the first British prime Minister to hold the title, or Sir Reobert Peel, founder of the first police force in London, who gave his nickname to the London “bobbie”.
The shilling also appears in phrases and uses that have no direct reference to coinage, such as “to be cut off with a shilling” which meant to be disinherited with only one shilling bequeathed to you; and “to take the King’s shilling” - the press gangs of the Royal Navy, when forcefully “recruiting” would place a shilling under their victims’ glass-bottom beer tankards in the taverns, which meant when you saw it you knew you had been recruited and had better pick up the shilling and come quietly!