37s. 6d., or 450 pennies, into which it had been coined ever since the fourth year of Edward IV., he made it yield 45s., or 540 pennies, in 1527; and in 1543, 48s., or 576 pennies. So that, taking the effect of the two operations together, he at last, instead of the former rate of 450 pennies out of eleven ounces and two penny-weights of silver, produced 576 pennies out of only four ounces of that metal. Henry's gold coins were sovereigns, half-sovereigns, or rials, half and quarter rials, angels, angelets or half angels, and quarter angels, George nobles, forty-penny pieces, crowns of the double rose, and half-crowns.[1] The George noble was so called from its having on the reverse St. George killing the dragon; its value was 6s. 8d., or two forty-penny pieces, the old value of the angel, which in 1527 was raised to 7s. 6d., an alteration rendered necessary in order to maintain the old relation between the gold and silver coinage after the similar depreciation of the latter. Gold was at this time valued, in the operations of the English Mint, at twelve times its weight in silver.[2]
But the depreciation and the debasement of the coinage were carried still farther by Edward VI. than they
- ↑ Leake, p. 195.
- ↑ A groat and a half groat coined by Cardinal Wolsey, as Archbishop of York, are among the curiosities of the coinage of this reign. These pieces, on the sides of the shield containing the royal arms, displayed the letters T. W., for Thomas Wolsey, and underneath the cardinal's hat. "It was an article of the cardinal's impeachment," says Leake, "that he presumptuously imprinted the cardinal's hat under the king's arms upon his majesty's coins of groats made at York, which had never been done by any subject before. So that his crime was not for coining money with the cardinal's hat thereon—for the smaller coins, which bore the same stamp, are not taken notice of—but for coining groats, which had never been done by any subject before; but, as to small money, it had been immemorially coined in the bishop's mints at Canterbury, York, and Durham. But this power dwindled away with the pope's authority here, and was discontinued after this reign; Edward Lee, Wolsey's successor, being the last that used this privilege."
