Five Guineas: Charles II (obverse); Four Shields (reverse) (1668): Art, History and Details

Five Guineas: Charles II (obverse); Four Shields (reverse) (1668) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is John Roettier (British, 1631–1703).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Once the decision was made to reform the coinage of England, and hammered coinage abandoned, the whole range of money was simplified. The guinea was the unit (like the dollar), and multiples of two and five were struck. One of the reasons for turning to mill coins was the long battle against the clipper (the act of shaving precious metal off coins for profit) and forger of coins. Not only were mill coins more exactly shaped, they were thick enough in larger denominations for a legend to be written on their edge as a protection against chipping. Here the edge legend translates: "An Ornament and a safeguard. In the—year of our reign." The regnal year starts from the day the king ascends the throne. Thus the first regnal year of Charles II was calculated from the death of his father, Charles I, in 1649. The year 1668 was therefore the 19th (20th regnal) year of Charles I, whose regnal years ran from January 30 in one year to January 29 of the next.

Object facts

• Title: Five Guineas: Charles II (obverse); Four Shields (reverse)
• Date: 1668
• Creator attribution: John Roettier (British, 1631–1703)
• Culture: England, Charles II, 1660-1685
• Type: Coins
• Technique: gold
• Dimensions: Diameter: 3.7 cm (1 7/16 in.)
• Collection: MED - Numismatics
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1969.199

A detail from the museum

The name guinea came from the gold where it was mined, the so-called Gold Coast of Africa on the Gulf of Guinea.

Collection credit

The Norweb Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, and Emery May Norweb. English Gold Coins, Ancient to Modern Times, On Loan to the Cleveland Museum of Art from the Norweb Collection. [Catalog. 1968.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.