The numismatic chronicle and journal of the Royal Numismatic Society

HAVE WE NO IRISH COINS OF EDWARD VI. ? 61
earlier testoons of 1549, with purely Roman lettering,
as clearly as the metallic difference separates the base
money from the fine ; it enables us to assert that side by
side with the great issue of standard silver in 1551 52
there was running another issue of a standard about
which we lack authentic information. For what purpose
was this base issue ? Was it for use in England ? No
one will affirm that. The commission for the great re-
coinage of 1551 is not supposed to exist, but no one can
imagine it authorised another coinage than that of the
full-faced shillings of fine silver. Knowing all we do know
of the common practice of the Crown before and after
Edward's reign, is it unreasonable to consider that this
debased currency of 1551 52, which so ran out side by
side with the restored standard silver, was meant for circu-
lation in Ireland ? I am afraid anything was thought
good enough for Ireland.
It may be said that this opinion gets no assistance from
certain documents quoted by Ruding, for in one of the most
important of this period (the Proclamation of Elizabeth of
September 27, 1560) these testoons with " the harp " are
named; and the passage taken by itself appears to
treat them as only English. It names them among the
basest, it prescribes their reduced value, it puts them by
themselves in a class with certain others ; it certainly
does not call them Irish.
" Her Majesty did therefore by
proclamation reduce the said base coins as near to their
value as might be, viz excepting the testoons
marked in the uppermost part in the border thereof with
one of the four marks, viz. a lion, a rose, a harp, a flower-
de-luce, which wei*e not above a sixth part of the said
base testoons, but which were so base and full of copper
(as was easy to be seen and understood), and differed so