Charles II, Gold Five Guineas (Kingdom of England, 1668–1684)

Historical Context

Following the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in May 1660, the English monetary system faced severe destabilization caused by the clipping, counterfeiting, and wear of circulating hand-hammered silver and gold coinage. King Charles II initiated an institutional and technological modernization of the Royal Mint at the Tower of London to address these deficiencies. The transition to regular machine-struck coinage took place in 1662-1663. Pierre Blondeau supervised the machinery, while John (Jan) Roettiers prepared the royal designs.

While smaller milled denominations—including the one-guinea and two-guinea pieces—entered production between 1663 and 1664, regular circulation strikings of the massive five guineas denomination did not commence until 1668. The delay was resolved in part by the passage of the Coinage Act of 1666 (18 & 19 Car. II c. 5), which abolished traditional seigniorage and brassage deductions, allowing merchants to deliver gold bullion to the Mint and receive coin of identical fine weight without manufacturing fees.

The initial bullion reserves for the 1668 striking were supplied under charter by the Company of Royal Adventurers of England Trading into Africa, which held a crown-sanctioned monopoly over English West African trade from 1660 until its reorganization in 1672 as the Royal African Company. To encourage merchants to remit precious metals directly to the Tower Mint, the Crown permitted the company's emblem—initially an elephant alone, and beginning in 1675 an elephant surmounted by a castle—to be punched into the obverse dies below the King's portrait. This commercial supply of West African gold was systematically bound to the transatlantic traffic in enslaved African people.

Originally designated in official records as a five-pound piece (£5) valued at 100 shillings, the five-guinea piece traded as a floating gold denomination against England's statutory silver currency. Due to prevailing market disparities and severe clipping of the domestic silver pool, the guinea's exchange rate climbed as high as 30 shillings in the 1690s. The currency was formally stabilized on 22 December 1717, when a royal proclamation issued on the advice of Mint Master Sir Isaac Newton fixed the guinea at 21 shillings, establishing the permanent rating of the five guineas at £5 5s. (105 shillings).

Obverse Iconographic Composition

The obverse presents John Roettiers' First Laureate Bust of Charles II facing right. Executed in the neoclassical Roman heroic style, the King is depicted bare-necked, wearing a laurel wreath secured at the occiput with two small hanging ribbons. The hair is rendered in dense, cascading curls falling past the pointed truncation of the neck.

On designated provenance varieties, the bullion hallmark appears directly beneath the truncation: a compact elephant facing left, with its trunk hanging downward and curving slightly forward. The entire peripheral field is enclosed within an outer border of finely spaced, raised denticles.

Obverse Epigraphy and Inscriptions

The peripheral obverse legend runs clockwise, beginning in the lower left field:

• Legend: CAROLVS · II · DEI · GRATIA ·
• Script: Latin capital lettering
• Language: Latin
• Transliteration: Carolus II, Dei Gratia
• Translation: "Charles II, by the Grace of God"
• Punctuation: Centered pellets (stops) separating words and concluding the peripheral phrase.

Reverse Iconographic Composition

The reverse design features a cruciform arrangement of four crowned, heater-shaped heraldic shields representing the realms claimed by the Stuart monarchy:

1. Top (12 o'clock): England, charged with three lions passant guardant in pale.
2. Right (3 o'clock): Scotland, displaying a lion rampant within a double tressure flory-counter-flory.
3. Bottom (6 o'clock): France, charged with three fleurs-de-lis, asserting the hereditary claim to the French throne.
4. Left (9 o'clock): Ireland, bearing a stringed harp.

Four sceptres terminate in the saltire angles between the shields, each crowned with a distinct national badge: an orb and cross for England, a thistle for Scotland, a fleur-de-lis for France, and a harp for Ireland. The center of the cruciform cross is anchored by an interlocking royal monogram of four script 'C's. The calendar year is divided across the top crown flanking the English shield, with the century digits to the left and the decade and unit digits to the right. The design terminates in an outer rim of raised denticles.

Reverse Epigraphy and Inscriptions

The reverse peripheral legend is divided into four quadrants by the crowns surmounting the heraldic shields:

• Legend: · MAG · BR · FRA · ET · HIB · REX 1668
• Script: Latin capital lettering
• Language: Latin
• Expanded Reading: Magnae Britanniae, Franciae et Hiberniae Rex 1668
• Translation: "King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, 1668"
• Arrangement: Reading clockwise, beginning at the top right following the crown over the English shield.

Edge Inscription and Security Milling

The edge of the five guineas planchet was impressed in relief prior to surface striking using Pierre Blondeau's edge-marking machine (la machine à marquer la tranche). This mechanical innovation was introduced as a physical safeguard against clipping and filing precious metal from the periphery of high-denomination coins.

• Documented Legend: + DECVS ET TVTAMEN ANNO REGNI VICESIMO (with minor punctuation varieties such as •+• DECVS • ET • TVTAMEN documented across dies)
• Script: Latin capital lettering
• Language: Latin
• Transliteration: Decus et Tutamen; Anno Regni Vicesimo
• Translation: "An ornament and a safeguard; in the twentieth year of [his] reign"
• Literary Source: In his treatise Numismata: A Discourse of Medals, Antient and Modern (1697, pp. 224–225), the diarist and numismatist John Evelyn recorded that he personally suggested the motto to Mint Master Sir Henry Slingsby. Evelyn drew the phrase from a vignette in Cardinal Richelieu's Greek Testament printed at the Louvre in 1642, which quoted Virgil's Aeneid (V. 262: viro decus et tutamen in armis). Evelyn noted that he advised Slingsby against including in armis, arguing that the phrase without it served perfectly to describe the raised lettering as both an aesthetic border and a practical defense against illicit shaving.
• Regnal Reckoning: Under Royalist constitutional theory, the legal reign of Charles II was dated continuously from the execution of his father, Charles I, on 30 January 1648/9. The twentieth regnal year (VICESIMO) commenced on 30 January 1667/8 and concluded on 29 January 1668/9, corresponding directly with calendar year 1668.

The gallery provides only the two faces of CMA 1969.199. The edge formula is a catalogue comparison, not an independent reading of its edge.

Typology, Documented Variants, and Metrology

The Charles II five guineas series was produced from 1668 through 1684 across two primary portrait types:

• First Laureate Bust (1668–1677): Characterized by a pointed truncation and long curls extending down the neck. Issued in 1668 with the elephant hallmark beneath the truncation (Spink S.3329; Bull EGC 167; KM#430.2), alongside an extremely rare plain truncation variant struck from non-company bullion (Spink S.3328; Bull EGC 166; KM#430.1). Later dates (1675–1677) incorporate the elephant and castle hallmark (Spink S.3330).
• Second Laureate Bust (1677–1684): Features a shorter hair treatment and a rounded truncation, struck both without hallmark (Spink S.3331) and with the elephant and castle hallmark (Spink S.3332).

Metrological Standards and the Heavy Issue

The statutory weight established under the Mint Indenture of 24 December 1663 defined 22-carat Crown gold (11/12 fine gold; the remainder is alloy, not an assay of this specimen) struck at 44½ guineas to the troy pound. This mandated a theoretical unit weight of 129.438 grains (8.388 g) per guinea, yielding a standard weight of 647.19 grains (~41.939 g) for the five guineas denomination.

However, standard numismatic corpora (KM#430.2) and historical records identify a contemporary "heavy issue" for the inaugural 1668–1669 production, struck at 8 56/75 pieces to the troy pound (658.5 grains / ~42.67 g). The existence of this heavier standard is attested by physical auction specimens measuring up to 42.67 g (e.g., Leu Numismatik Auction 22, Lot 603).

Comparison Specimens

• Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA 1969.199): 1668 First Bust with Elephant; diameter: 37 mm; weight: 41.563 g. This is the museum measurement. Its difference from a legal standard does not identify the amount or cause of metal loss.
• Museums Victoria (Item 77716): 1668 First Bust with Elephant; diameter: 36.5 mm; weight: 41.606 g; die axis: 06h; edge reading: + DECVS ET TVTAMEN ANNO REGNI VICESIMO.

Scholarly Debates and Attribution Limitations

Corporate Bullion Attribution

A persistent error in commercial numismatic literature is the conflation of the Company of Royal Adventurers of England Trading into Africa with the Royal African Company. Because the Royal African Company was not chartered until 1672, specimens dated 1668 carrying the solitary elephant punch represent bullion imported exclusively under the charter of the earlier Company of Royal Adventurers. The elephant-and-castle mark adopted in 1675 reflects the subsequent administration of the reorganized Royal African Company.

Bullion Sourcing Limitations

While the elephant mark confirms that precious metal was imported through the Company of Royal Adventurers, surviving Mint account books and Treasury papers do not correlate specific dies or production runs with individual merchant vessels, cargo manifests, or West African coastal trading posts (such as Cape Coast Castle or Fort Cormantin). Any attempt to link an individual specimen to a specific shipping voyage remains conjectural.

Edge Orientation and Die Alignments

While milled issues of this era generally exhibit a 6 o'clock (coin alignment) die axis, individual strikings display subtle die rotation anomalies. Furthermore, because Blondeau's edge collar applied lettering to unstruck planchets prior to their placement in the screw press, the edge inscription can appear either upright relative to the obverse or upright relative to the reverse. Institutional catalogue entries frequently omit edge orientation and exact punctuation transcriptions unless accompanied by dedicated edge photography.

References

1. Cleveland Museum of Art: Five Guineas: Charles II, Accession No. 1969.199. Accession Record No. 1969.199 (Gift of the Norweb Collection)
2. Museums Victoria Collections: Coin - 5 Guineas, Charles II, Great Britain, 1668. Item 77716 (Numismatics Collection)
3. British Numismatic Journal: John Evelyn and His Numismata. Dykes, D.W., BNJ Vol. 77 (2007), pp. 126–140
4. A Discourse Concerning Coining the New Money Lighter. Barbon, Nicholas (1696), p. 78
5. Numista: 5 Guineas - Charles II (1st bust), England. Type #27921; Spink 3328–3330; KM#430
6. Leu Numismatik AG: Auction 22, Lot 603. Auction 22 (30 May 2026), Lot 603
7. English Gold Coinage: Volume 1 (1649–1816). Bull, Maurice (2020), Spink & Son Ltd., EGC 166–167 (Further Reading)
8. The Mint: A History of the London Mint from A.D. 287 to 1948. Craig, Sir John (1953), Cambridge University Press, pp. 154–176 (Further Reading)
9. Freedom's Debt: The Royal African Company and the Politics of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1672–1752. Pettigrew, William A. (2013), UNC Press, ch. 1–2 (Further Reading)
10. Coins of England and the United Kingdom: Standard Catalogue of British Coins. Spink & Son Ltd. (2023), 58th Edition, S.3328–S.3332 (Further Reading)
11. The Royal Mint Museum: Charles II. Mechanisation, guinea family, company badges and edge safeguards