Dan Snow's History Hit - Treasures of The Royal Mint

Episode Date: June 14, 2022

A history of British monarchs in coins. With a history stretching over 1,100 years, The Royal Mint has forged a fascinating story through the world of historic coins. As the second oldest mint in the world, and the oldest company in the UK, its history is entwined with the 61 monarchs who have ruled England and Britain over the last 1,200 years. Chris Barker, historian at the Royal Mint Museum takes Dan through some of the rarest coins in the collection from within the vaults, unravelling what the coinage reveals about monarchs from the Norman conquest right through to the 20th century, including the coins created for Edward VIII but were never released in light of his abdication. Produced by Mariana Des ForgesMixed and Mastered by Dougal PatmoreIf you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download the History Hit app please go to the Android or Apple store.

This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, folks, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. Now, I've been filming a lot with the Royal Mint recently.

We've got a special History Hit partnership with the Royal Mint. They make all the coins and stuff. Unbelievable. And they've been doing so for over a thousand years. Love those guys. So it made sense that we do a little podcast now because I visited the Royal Mint at a secret location. It's not a secret actually. It's on Google Maps, but you can go. It's near Cardiff in the valleys of South Wales. It is the second oldest mint in the world. It's the oldest company

in the UK. They've got the rarest coins in the history of Britain. And minting coins, sorting out the money, is one of the most basic fundamental roles of government. As such, their history is entwined with the history of the 61 monarchs who've ruled England and Britain over the last 1200 years. It's an awesome place. So I went and looked through some of the rarest coins in the collection with Chris Barker. He's a historian at the Royal Mint Museum. It's a wonderful visitor attraction. Go over there and you can see the Alfred coin.

You get to see a Waterloo medal. Oh, some real treats in there, let me tell you. And he took me through some of the rarest coins in the collections in their vault, stuff that's not even in the museum, which was great. The ones that I really enjoyed were the ones from edward the eighth there were coronation coins created for edward the eighth but they were never released because he abdicated so they're now extraordinarily valuable and there's a lot of them there in the museum if you wish to watch videos about the royal mint please head over to our History Hit YouTube page, our Facebook page, and there'll be stuff appearing on our subscription TV channel as well.

History Hit TV on all smart TVs, handheld devices and all sorts of things, wherever the internet works. Tens of thousands of people watching around the world, so very, very grateful to you all for doing that. So go and check out History Hit TV. if you follow the link in the notes this podcast it'll take you straight there but in the meantime here is our very exciting podcast with chris barker and the royal mint museum enjoy chris thanks so much for coming on the pod buddy pleasure always happy to help so we are standing in the inner sanctum i have to go through several layers of security to get here. What room is this? So we're actually in the museum room itself,

where all the coins, the medals, and the seals are actually kept. But it's not, no one can come here. It's not open to public. It's not, no. But if you're a researcher, you can book, and you want to have a look at some of the stuff, we're always happy to help with that as well.

And you've got these amazing cases that we've got long shelves. It's very much like a normal archive but long shelves. Beautiful handmade wooden cases by looks at lining all the shelves and so these are all the coins in here. Coins are kept here, we've got medals here, we've got seals as well which the Rinter's been made and also objects relate to the Mint. You know the cabinet over there for example showing off a little bit is Newton's cabinet. What? Belonging to Isaac Newton from his time as master of the Mint. Get out of here! You've got various paintings and statues as well relating to...

And what about that chair then? What's the difference with that chair over there? That chair there is actually the King's Bottom Chair. It's come from Tower Hill when we moved down, and four kings are said to have sit in it when they came to the Royal Mint. Really? Yeah. So some fantastic objects dotted around. So how many coins have you got in here? We've got roughly over 100,000 but we're always

adding to it all the time. No way! Growing all the time. But that's British and foreign as well? British, overseas, the minstrel for every country around the world pretty much, we've done something for them. But in terms of where we all begin, it starts here really. So how far back do you go? We go all the way back in terms of our establishment to the reign of Alfred the Great. Oh really? And that is what we see here in this tray. We've got some Anglo-Saxon silver pennies, a few Viking imitations, but the interesting one is this down here.

So we've got the obverse, the head side, and the reverse side there as well. So what we see here is a penny of Alfred the Great. So that sort of stylized depiction of old Alfred there. Nose, his eye there and the hair. Split inscription, Alfred. The interesting thing is the reverse. This Londonia monogram. You've got his brother here.

So you do go back earlier as well. So why is Alfred so special? Alfred is a sort of symbolic start date for us really. When he claims London and starts minting in London, that's where we sort of get our beginnings from in roughly sort of the 880s. When that happens, that's when you can trace the founding of the Royal Mint. And it's a bit of a shaky start, but we can certainly say from hand on heart that from the late 9th century onwards, you've got a continuous history of an organisation that we know as the Royal Mint. And it's based in London, creating coins for the realm? That's what Alfred the Great establishes as a strong centralised royal control of the

coinage, from London, and there are other mints dotted around his realms, but where you get this strong control from the centre, which has been dominant right from Alfred's reign. In that case the big question is, what do coins mean? What's the purpose of coins? It's an interesting question because what you see at this point in history is a coinage that relies on its weight in precious metal to give it its value. So it should have a penny's worth of silver in it. And what you do is you put an image on that as the government, as the monarchy,

to show that it's official and to show that the public can trust that what they're dealing with actually has that value. That sort of ties in to why you get this imagery appearing on coinage. You know, why not just use blank discs of silver? You've got to show it's approved, you've got to show it's regulated, and that sort of ties in to the very fundamental basics, the fundamental beginnings really of what coinage is. So I can trust that, if someone gives me that I can trust it? You can see you've got the representation of a monarch on there.

You know it comes under the control of Alfred the Great. He's in charge. You can rely on that to be worth what it says it is, what it's meant to be. So that's being minted in London. And then from this point on, that's the beginning of the Wessex English in the British States. It grows from there. And you have mints dotted around England and the United Kingdom more generally, all of them producing coinage because it's much easier to have little mints dotted around England rather than have one centralised mint at this point. Sending coinage

around the country from London is very tricky in the Anglo-Saxon period with the road system. And is there proliferation of coins? I mean, are there different kinds of coins that represent different amounts of wealth? Not at this point. You're pretty much dealing with only one coin in circulation, pretty much. It's one denomination rather, and that is the penny. And that's what we see here is a whole host of pennies. And that's because you don't really get a monetary economy as we know it. So don't think of this idea of going to market and buying goods with coinage on a regular basis. Your normal person is often being paid in kind, really. You know, your shelter, your food, your drink.

The penny at this point is a very high-value coin. Oh, really? You're paying taxes with it. That's what it's for. So it's not really monetary economy as we know it today. Oh, really? So these would have usually been wealthy people? Higher-value purchasers, people paying their taxes with these type of things. It's not sort of everyday currency in a way that we would understand it today.

Interesting. So you've got his older brothers here like Ethelred. Why do you think Alfred's so important? Alfred is the important point because it's where we begin as a Royal Mint. That's where we trace our origins back to. OK, so we've got these unbelievable, these incredible, what are these cases? They're absolutely gorgeous, aren't they?

And each one of them is full of coins. That's correct. We've got all the coins from the collection are housed in these beautiful little rectangular boxes that we see here. They are unbelievable, I love them. Anyway, so let's get the coins out. What do you call these?

A tray of coins. A tray of coins. So what we've seen here is this tray of Anglo-Saxon silver pennies and some Viking imitation pennies up here. Roughly about the same size as the penny is today, really. Yeah, and about 100 on this particular tray. I love that Ethelred, Alfred's older brother, who died mortally wounded in battle.

Well, died of wounds. And Alfred here, is he your sort of founder, really? He is where it all begins. And what we see here are pennies of Alfred the Great. And you can see his depiction of his portrait on there. There he is, the great man. Slightly Roman Emperor-esque in appearance. Well there you go, obsessed with Rome, the legacy of Rome. And is that L? That's called the London Monogram penny so what you have on here is all the letters to spell out Londonia. So you've got an L, an O in the middle and an N that

runs across the entire coin, the D at the end, and a little I tucked inside the D. And there is a very faint connection between the downstrokes of the L and the N, which gives you the A as well. All the letters required to spell out Londonia. So he's saying, I'm Alfred. You can trust me. This coin's minted in London, and it is legal tender. You can trust it. That's what you're saying, yes. It's struck in London. I am in charge, and this is something that's struck under my royal authority tender, you can trust it. That's what you're saying, yes. It's been struck in London, I am in charge, and this is something that's struck under my royal authority, and you can accept that. I love it.

You've got Edred, Edward the Elder, Edmund, Edwig. All of them are here, yeah. Some of the slightly shorter-lived Anglo-Saxon kings. They're all broken down by rain, and you've also got in this tray little spaces, which are the red dots, where we can actually add more, should any of them... What, you mean there are gaps in your collection? There are gaps in our collection.

Whoa! So there are gaps. Hey everyone, if anyone's got a... Edward the Elder looks like you need an extra Edward the Elder coin. We could do with a couple more of them, yeah. Athelstan, what a legend. Yeah. I'm a big Athelstan fan.

Okay, well, if anyone's got those coins, please send them in. Okay, so we've gone from the early English, let's get to the Normans and the... Yeah, so... Okay, yeah we've gone from the early English, let's get to the Normans and the... Yeah, so... Okay, yeah, further down... With only one coin in denomination, rather, in circulation, you do need change sometimes. And what they would actually quite literally do is chop the coins into halves and to quarters. Oh my god. So what you see here is the basis of the British pre-decimal system of ha'pnees and farthings.

Literally half or a quarter in the farthings case. It's a very practical way to deal with small changes. So ha'pnee, a penny for our foreign fans, is actually just literally half a penny. Literally half a penny. And farthing, probably the name farthing may well have been derived from forthing, forthing, farthing, so four parts.

So you see how some of these names may have developed. So we've got Edward I there, his imperial aspirations for the whole of the British Isles. So it says Bristol, Basin, Edmunds, Berwick. These are coins being minted elsewhere in the kingdom? This is representing that spread of mints. Still royal mints but dotted in various parts of the kingdom. So you've got Bristol and Berwick as you mentioned and what you would do is you'd have strong control of the coinage dies and you'd send them out to these regional mints. So he's still controlling it very tightly. And round the side here you've got Edward written.

And it's actually during his reign that you start to see a little bit more expansion in terms of denominations. So we see here this larger coin, which is actually a groat, a four pence piece. The famous groat! It's a groat, yeah. That comes in roughly when the Royal Mint moves into the Tower of London in about 1279. Because Edward expands the Tower, doesn't he? He does, yeah. It's under his watch that the Mint finally moves from various locations dotted around the capital in London

into one centralized location in London, which is the Tower of London itself. Love that. So that is very cool. So they've literally been chopped, quite finely chopped, haven't they? They haven't just been... Yeah, very finely chopped. It's interesting as well that the design on the reverse, the tail side, actually has a cross on. So if you're gonna start chopping your coins into halves and quarters, it's quite useful to have that there as a bit of a guide. Do you use a filibre? Probably a little bit, yeah.

There's obviously religious overtones as well. And if those ended up, when the tax came in and there were lots of farthings and hapenies, would they just melt them all down and start again? That's the joy of what you're dealing with here, is a coinage that you can actually just remelt and begin again? That's the joy of what you're dealing with here is a coinage that you can actually just Remelt and begin again. The difficulty is with these smaller denominations like the farthing, the quarter, very very fiddly, very very tiny I mean people listening. It's the size of a small fingernail. Absolutely tiddly. It's very very small and you could easily lose that What else we got? Let's keep going. We've done the groats. So if you move from here, we'll start to look at some gold coinage. You have to wait a while

before you get a regular supply of gold coins. And that doesn't come about until the reign of Edward III. Look at those! And what we see is the first regular gold coinage in England, which is called a gold noble. It's this spectacular gold coin that we see here. Those are just magical. So what was the reason for these gold coins? So what we see here is Edward III in England, more generally, catching up with what's going on in continental Europe. You've got a gold coinage in continental Europe for quite some time. And so this is England's first attempt to really keep up with that. So what we have here are these stunning gold coins, and they're worth quite a lot

of money. So they're worth, at the time time six shillings and eightpence, which sounds bonkers to modern people because it doesn't really work as a domination you think, but it does because three of these means you've got actually one pound. And that means a pound of gold? Literally. In weight? And also in denomination as well. Right. So that's what you're coming from, the 20 shilling piece, the idea of 20 shillings worth of money. And how many pence in a shilling? How many pence in a shilling? So you've got 12 pence to a shilling, 20 shillings to a pound.

Right, okay. It's the very sort of daft, bonkers, pre-decimal system. No, but it makes sense. We lost in the 70s, which always blows overseas visitors' minds. So you're looking at this would be a fortune in the 40s. This is a huge amount of money. This is only going amount of money. This is only going to be used by your merchants, your banks, and your gentry.

And it's going to go across national boundaries. So imagine an English merchant going off to France to buy goods in bulk. He's probably paying his French counterpart with a small purse full of these things. And that explains the time and effort that have gone into making this truly remarkable, stunning coin. And again, it has to be reliable because otherwise trade will break down There'll be no trust. Exactly. Yeah, and you have to make sure you get the right ratio of gold to the value of the coin

This is actually Edward's second attempt of a gold coinage. The first one he gets it wrong There's too much gold in relation to its actual face value and people just melt it down because it's worth more as bullion So if anyone comes across leopards, are up here they're extremely valuable pieces because it's next to none left. These leopards here? These leopards up here. Wow. Now these are unbelievably intricate. What are they, 5cm across would you say? Yes, give or take. They inscribe the most beautiful images of a ship. That's why I like them in particular. Talk me through that ship.

So what you see is this sort of medieval cog, a little bit banana-shaped really for the average viewer in terms of its appearance at the bottom. And in there you've got Edward III standing in his armour with a drawn sword, crowned and with a shield. And on the shield you have the coat of arms. So is he actually standing in there? He's sort of that's his head. I thought it was the mast. That's the man himself. Oh my goodness

he's towering over the hull. Yep he's a huge figure. With the coat of arms of the king of France and England. Yeah combined together. That is the least subtle thing I've ever seen in my life. What is going on with these designs? So what you have is thinking about the iconography of coinage now and you're thinking about the messages you can convey on a coin. So Edward III is the king that really sort of kicks off the Hundred Years War. Battle of Sluice. Exactly. Goes well. This actually probably references that. I bet it does. Yeah, I was thinking that. It must do. It's the first great naval battle of the Hundred Years War, isn't it? And knowing that these will be seen overseas, particularly in places like France, And knowing that these will be seen overseas, particularly in places like France, what you want to do as king is you want to hammer home that message that I am rightful claim it's the French throne,

I can claim it, I've got the martial might to do so, hence the ship, the naval battle that he wins, hence the drawn sword, and also the coat of arms on his shield, where you've got the French fleur-de-lis in the first and the fourth quarter. So the shield of an Anglo-French monarchy. An Anglo-French monarchy. So you're hammering home this message that I am in charge and I can reclaim the French throne. It is mine and I have the martial might to do so. Coins do a lot of heavy lifting, don't they?

I mean, through our history they're an expression of royal power, they're international propaganda, they're an essential tool of trade. I mean it's so many different jobs. The joy of them is that even though they're quite small relatively, you can fit quite a lot of messaging onto them and they're highly portable as a result and that means that this messaging that you've got in here, which is quite cleverly done, can be seen much more widely. You know it's going to go into continental Europe, this is going to be seen by the right sort of people in continental Europe. So you going to be seen by the right sort of people in continental Europe

So you're getting a very powerful message across Asking for a friend how much would it cost to buy one of those now? It's tricky because they do vary but if you've got a spare sort of £20,000 knocking around you'll probably be able to get sort of an entry level one and they go up in value from there depending on condition depending on rarity and different types So anywhere between 20 40 and above thousand pounds. And so those coins are being individually crafted? They are, they've been individually struck, hammered out.

If you look behind you can pick up some tooling as to how they're actually made. That's part of it, that's the other half. So this is the basic bit of kit for striking a coin in the medieval period. It's called a pile and trussle The pile is the lower half here It's that spike would secure it into a lump of wood and this would have an engraved image on it Okay, and that's where you put your blank of metal and then you put your top half the trussle onto it Well that's all the way around. Okay, that's it And then you whack it and then you whack it and that explains the damage we see at the top here. Okay, so

They are all the same because there would have been an original... There would have been an engraver Somebody was actually making these so actually carving into this steel. Into this here? Yeah, or actually hammering in little shapes We think they might have had little shapes like a little straight line or a little curve and they were tapping it in to develop the image And that's how you develop tooling and that is why all the coins we've seen a very very thin as well because there's only so much force you can buy They're walloping something right hammer, right? So you've got to have them very thin to get the actual impression on them. So these two lumps In fact, you can still see it's the vague outline of a design on there. Yeah, you see that

It's worn away over time and pitted Are they iron or steel? There're a mild steel of sorts. In a way it's quite clumsy. There's a contrast isn't there between this kind of lump of steel and the intricacy of what's being engraved on the top there or carved into the top. You think about those nobles, how beautiful they are and you look at how they're made, it's a very crude method of manufacturing. It does feel crude doesn't it? Yeah it is The tops been whacked with a hammer and you can see it's coming apart

Love it and when it needs date from these are sort of from the later medieval periods in the 15th century for number rightly Oh, it's all going off Was the roses but one of the things about medieval tooling is it's very hard to find there's very little of it I'll bet because they tended toital them when they were run out. So they melt them down and start all over again. And also not something that people maybe would keep. Exactly. It's something that you just scrap metal. This job here must be one of the most extraordinary jobs.

And they had no magnification by that stage? No. Very little. You're not going to have a lot that you can work off. You're just working off by eye. And there's no master, so to speak. So what an engraver does when this is finished, they will have to just copy as best they can from the last one. You're always going to get slight variation on all of these coins that we've seen there, slight differences in the hair or in the ship,

you can get those differences because you're copying by eye what's done previously. And so you can tell exactly where these coins fit in a sequence and when they were struck? By studying these designs you get some idea of what's going on. You also get little marks on there as well, tiny tiny little dating marks called privy marks. There are little sun, there are little flowers, something on that. That gives you an idea of when they're made. And this was going on in the Tower of London?

This happens in the Tower of London. So from 1279 we move into the tower and we're there for centuries. There's the tower, there was a royal zoo there, everything's going on in the tower, it was a thriving place. Exactly, and it was a busy, busy place, there's a lot going on. And we forget as well that it was a garrison. And one of the problems we had as the Mint was that we often ended up sort of butting heads with the garrison who wanted our space to house troops. And certainly in Newton's time as master, which is in the early 1700s,

there are reports of drawn swords, fights, drunken brawls between mint workers and the garrison. So it would have been quite a contested space and an interesting space in which to work, I think. And also throw a lot of precious metal into that as well. Exactly. And one of the times that we have been robbed, one of the very few times, but the only time we've had an armed robbery, was when a member of the garrison actually held up the mint and legged it down to the south coast with a couple of bags of golden guineas in the 1790s did he get away with it he didn't he was caught on the kent coast brought back brought to trial and hung for his crimes you listen to dan snow's history i'm in the royal mint museum more coming up I'm in the Royal Mint Museum.

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So we're going to see how it changes but we're first going to segue into the Commonwealth and Cromwell. Yes that'll be good fun. It'll tell a lot about the changing nature of power I'm sure. It's a really interesting period, the Commonwealth and then when Cromwell is in charge because obviously Charles I loses the civil wars, and his head's taken off, and then you get the Commonwealth, and we have coinage of the Commonwealth.

Ooh, quite boring. Very bland, very puritanical. But interestingly, we go to English inscriptions. Yeah. So you can see Commonwealth of England on here. Oh, that's right, it was in Latin before. It was in Latin before. So sweeping away all of that potpourri that you get associated with,

say, the Catholic Church and Latin phrasing. England and Ireland? Poor old Wales doesn't get a look in obviously. Never does unfortunately, but very very heraldic. One thing to note is that you've got, this is the heads and, well what was the heads, the obverse and the reverse side of the same coin here. No crowned head. You've got no crowned. You've got no crowned head. And you've got the arms of England, and you've mentioned Ireland instead. That's during the Commonwealth era. Okay. Then you get Cromwell.

Hold on a second. And you get a very contrast, great contrast. That's not Cromwell, is it? That is Cromwell. Oh, yeah, look. Oliver. And you've got these titles there that you would get in Latin, like you would get with any reigning monarch.

And the interesting one is the reverse. So we see here the arms of England as it is at the time and interestingly it's crowned for one but in the centre you have Cromwell's arms as well. No! Yeah and you have this incredibly Orwellian inscription which is, I'm not going to do the Latin, but it translates basically into peace through war which gives this idea of a military dictator. What? The coinage really does demonstrate what Cromwell is king in all but

name and a huge crown on it yeah that tells you everything you know doesn't it yep it's brilliant coinage for demonstrating what was going on at the time and obviously Scotland incorporated in there as well after the conquest of Scotland that is just in one object you're learning so much there about the nature of Cromwell's rule. They're some of my favourite pieces really because you can see how coinage can be used to tell the story of history. You've got the Commonwealth and those puritanical ideas sweeping away the king and then you've got Cromwell coming in as a military dictator just like the king was. All right that's Oliver Cromwell done. So from there I want to return back to production and see how things change because you go from those

thin coins that we've seen in the medieval period to a much thicker coinage when Charles II is restored. Here we go. And we can see how things start to change because you go from basically a medieval production system to a modern one. Not quite overnight but you get the idea. So you can see the first coins of his reign, still hammered out. Very clearly, very flat, very thin relief, very poor. To these pieces here. Chunky. Huge difference and that is because you're starting to use something called a screw press, which is basically a fly press, a ginormous screw and you've got two chaps pulling on one side on ropes attached to a counterweight, two on another, that creates a screw motion, the screw descends with a tool stuck at the bottom and it strikes the coins, and because you're

using a screw you can impart a lot more pressure, hence how much thicker they are. A little elephant down there which just comes as a surprise. What you're looking at here is a guinea family, so five guinea piece, double guinea and a guinea down here. It's a new denomination at the start of Charles's reign and the elephant is a what we call a privy mark that denotes the source of the bullion that went into making up these coins. Is it from West Africa? Well the elephant is a mark of the African Company and the Africa Company import the gold from the Guinea coast of Africa, hence the name Guinea. That's how the coin picks up its name.

It is astonishing how much you can tell from coins, because obviously this is the period where English merchants are beginning to play a greater and greater role in the trade in enslaved Africans, taking across the Middle Passage to the Americas. And here it is. You get hints of that right on this coinage. Right large on the coinage with these little symbols that you see. It's in the elephants, yeah. Right, so we're approaching very excitingly now the 18th century.

I need to show you my precious treasure that I found. Let's have a look. On the foreshore of the Thames, a George II coin. You've got Britannia on there. Yeah, 1752, so just almost seven years war which is a particular area of interest for me but what can you tell me about that? What is it? So what you actually have here is a halfpenny. That's a halfpenny? That is a halfpenny. It's a copper halfpenny and we have...

How do you know that? Because it's small? It's the size. So also from the design obviously you can see George II on there. But what you get is Britannia appearing on the copper Hapenys and Farthings of the period. Interestingly enough it does tie in with Charles II as we were talking about earlier Because it's during his reign that you start to see copper Hapenys and Farthings being struck. But yes, we also have one of these ourselves. Oh brilliant, well I'm not surprised. Are you telling me this isn't the rarest coin in the world and it's worth 10 million quid? I'm afraid, I'm afraid not. Unfortunately you might have to hold off on your expectations of value. Well okay good. Right where's next? So I'll pop these away and then we can go and look at some great rarities that we actually have in the museum's collection.

Because one of our real strengths as a collection is we have a lot of rare coins. And I can't let you go today without you seeing the coinage of Edward VIII. Right, who only ruled for months. Edward VIII is the infamous monarch who abdicates in 1936. He comes to the throne in January 1936 and he abdicates in December. As a result of that, no coins bearing his effigy are ever struck for circulation. We were about a month away from going into mass production, planned for January 1937. Dodged a bullet there, didn't you? Yeah, well and truly.

But the problem we have is that we go through the whole design process, creating a new monarch's coinage from new reverse designs and a new portrait and what you see here are very very rare coins because they're all the trials the tests and the patterns that go into developing a new monarchs coinage so hugely rare pieces as we didn't go into production. We're probably looking at the lion's share of the... Well and truly and you can see from some of these marks here that the British Museum have to borrow the pieces from us because they don't have any in their collection. So it gives you an idea of how rare they are.

But Edward is a very difficult man to deal with for us at the Royal Mint because it's tradition that the way the monarch faces should alternate by reign. And that is a long tradition that goes all the way back to Charles II. And Edward would have been the first monarch to have broken those centuries of tradition because he felt that this was his best side. Oh, no way. And he was doggedly determined to have his best side. Left side of his face.

Up here on the Guinness, yeah. Ironically, though, it never was released. It was never issued. So his brother, George, was able to keep the tradition going. Yep. The Mint sort of pretended that Edward played ball. And if you put three of them in a row they actually face the same way because the public will have never seen these. So you actually have three monarchs facing in the same direction

to maintain the tradition going through it all. One thing we forget about these and the abdication more generally is just how controversial it was. In 1936 this was a massive constitutional crisis and we have a great object in our collection which helps illustrate that, which we can go and have a look at now. Okay, so we've come over here to look at the box in which the Edward VIII coinage was kept. And this, I think, really does demonstrate that constitutional crisis at the time in 1936. Because when he abdicates, the mint doesn't want to seem to be tainted by the controversy of Edward the eighth So all of those coins we've seen are bundled into this box

It's only a small box and it's got this wonderful inscription Which is not to be opened except in the presence of two senior officers of the Royal Mint That was then clearly wrapped up with string and the string is then sealed off to show if anybody's been at it. Old-fashioned wax seal. And these, this little box of coins, sits at the back of the deputy master's safe for about 30 years before in the 1970s they're finally allowed to enter the light of day and come into the museum's collection. So they weren't even allowed into the museum? No, they sat at the back of the deputy master's safe. That shows how toxic it was. Completely. And if we open it, we can see how these things were stored.

You've got all the little envelopes that we have here, in which the coins themselves would have been kept. And you've got a little note here as well, which logs every time anybody would have accessed the actual collection itself Something so symbolic about that. Just put them on the box and hide them away Yeah, exactly dark safe and forget about them in the Tower of London until such time as it's no longer controversial We've all got those things in our houses that we just want to push out the way and forget about This is the raw mints equivalent. Well, I was a little bit more valuable push out the way and forget about, this is the raw mint's equivalent. Well, ours are a little bit more valuable.

The monarchy's dark secret. And ironically, these are now the most valuable coins in your collection. Probably by far and away, yeah. Wow. Yeah, they're incredibly rare pieces. Isn't it funny? Yeah.

They were the thing that your forebears were most embarrassed about. Didn't want to touch. And now they're the most, yeah. Yeah, incredible object and an incredible story. And speaking of the shortest reigned monarch recently, you've got the queen who's been around for a lot longer A lot longer, and I guess do these show the aging process? They do, these are the five definitive portraits of the Queen's, these are the ones that appear on circulating coins

And we go from the young Queen Elizabeth here, the Mary Gillick version from the start of her reign in the 50s Through to the final one down there which is done by former mint engraver Jody Clark And take you through the full 70 years of the Queen's reign. How often do you upgrade someone's face? There's no hard and fast rule but it's usually been about sort of every 15, 20 years or so that we've changed the portrait. And does the Queen have a role in okaying this? She does. So every coin design we make she actually proves and that's the same for her portraits. So she will sign off on every one of these. Does she ever say no she's never said no she has tweaked a few

of them really but she's never actually said no and the vast majority of the time there was a direct line in as well to the design process because these are approved well recommended i should say by the roman advisory committee and the president of roman advisory committee right up until 1999 was the the Duke of Edinburgh. Oh, I see. So you've got the direct line in through her husband as to the design of her portraits. And the crowns seem to change a bit, don't they? They do. Each artist can develop whatever they want, really, with the Queen's portrait,

and they often change the crowns around a little bit. You can see you've got laurel wreaths on the first portrait, through to tiaras and various crowns. Well, thanks so much. That was incredible. What's your favourite coin of all the ones we've seen or ones we haven't seen? Probably one that I have to say is actually a coinage portrait of Charles II. It's called the Petition Crown. It's done by an engraver called Thomas Simon.

And it's a wonderful depiction of Charles II. You really get a sense of the playboy monarch from looking at this portrait. Love that. Chris, thanks so much for coming and talking me through the Royal Mint Collection. It's been a great fun been a pleasure I feel the hand of history

upon our shoulders all this tradition of ours our school history our songs this part of the history of our country all were gone

and finished thanks folks for listening to this episode of Dance Notes History as I say all the time I love doing these podcasts they are the best thing I do professionally. I feel very lucky to have you listening to them.

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