Unite: Charles I (obverse); Crowned Shield (reverse) (1625): Art, History and Details

Unite: Charles I (obverse); Crowned Shield (reverse) (1625) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

After ascending to the throne, Charles I ordered that the coinage should remain the same types and denominations as that of James I. Throughout all the troubles of his reign he did not alter the value of the gold coinage. Until the English Civil War started in 1642, the king's authority continued to rule the Tower mint. With the appointment of Sir John Coniers as Lieutenant of the Tower, control of the mint passed into the hands of the Parliamentary party, which continued to strike coins bearing the king's effigy and titles. To keep the Royalist party supplied with money, Charles opened other mints at York, Aberystwyth, Shrewsbury, Oxford, Bristol, Truro, Exeter, Weymouth, and Chester, while a mint operated near Worcester in 1646. During the civil war mints operated in the besieged towns of Carlisle, Colchester, Newark, Pontefract, and Scarborough, and produced a number of irregularly shaped coins of many odd denominations hastily struck from local domestic plate.

Object facts

• Title: Unite: Charles I (obverse); Crowned Shield (reverse)
• Date: 1625
• Culture: England, Charles I, 1625-1649
• Type: Coins
• Technique: gold
• Dimensions: Diameter: 3.4 cm (1 5/16 in.)
• Collection: MED - Numismatics
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1969.192

A detail from the museum

The gold unite was valued at 20 shillings, the roman numeral XX can be seen on the obverse.

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.