Currency, Conversation, and Control: Political Discourse and the Coinage in Mid-Tudor England

Abstract

In 1551, stories began to circulate in England about sightings of a 'strange coin'. The coin, which was said to depict a bear on one face and a ragged staff on the other, was rumoured to have been produced in a secret mint that the Earl of Warwick had established in Dudley Castle. The first recorded instance of this rumour comes from October 1551, when one Anthony Gyller of Coventry was sent to the Marshalsea on the charge that he had 'spoken and bruted abrode sediciously that the Lorde Great Master had set up a coyning house at Dudley Castle, and that he had sene the newe coyne hym sellf, which was, he sayd, a ragged staff on thone side and a beares face on thother'. The day after Gyller's arrest, a Yeoman of the Guard also reported that he had seen 'a certain strange coyne with a ragged staff' on it; he too was arrested and taken into custody. 1 The day after that, two more men were sent to the Marshalsea 'for a brute raysed of the aforenamed straunge coyne'. 2 Although Anthony Gyller was released from prison in 1552, the rumour about the strange coin persisted; and in the same month, one Thomas Holland of Bath also claimed to have seen a shilling with 'a ragged staff in it'. 3 The story of the 'strange coin' was not confined to the claims of these five men. It gained international currency when Jehan Scheyfve, Ambassador of the Holy Roman Empire to England, wrote his own account of it in a letter to the Imperial Court. Scheyfve noted that the rumour had arisen after a new coinage had been introduced in England, and that the rumour concerned the new silver shilling, commonly known as a 'teston'. He reported that 'when the new testoons came out a murmur arose among the people that the said testoons bore the three bears staffs … instead of three lions', and explained that 'the blame for this 1