The silver Three Farthings (¾d) coin was introduced in Queen Elizabeth I's third and fourth coinages (1561-1582), as part of a plan to produce large quantities of coins of varying denominations and high metal content.
The obverse shows a left-facing bust of the queen, with a rose behind her and the legend -- Elizabeth, by the grace of God a rose without a thorn—while the reverse shows the royal arms with the date above the arms and a mint mark at the beginning of the legend reading -- City of London, the Tower Mint.
The three-farthings coin closely resembles the three-halfpence coin, differing only in the diameter, which is 14 millimetres for an unclipped coin, compared to 16mm for the three-halfpence.
All the coins are hammered, except for the extremely rare milled three-farthings of 1563, of which only three examples are known to exist.
|
Famous quotes containing the words english and/or coin:
“The English are crooked as a nation and honest as individuals. The contrary is true of the French, who are honest as a nation and crooked as individuals.”
—Edmond De Goncourt (1822–1896)
“It is not funny that a man should be killed, but it is sometimes funny that he should be killed for so little, and that his death should be the coin of what we call civilization.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)