Thanks, stillanntn6b! I love English history, and this article is so interesting. I only wish it had explained why there were roses on the reverse of the coin - I am sure there was a very specific reason.

Jackie

I believe it is Henry III.

That was wonderful!! Thank you so much for showing this to us!! It almost looks like the king is holding a skull. ??? How wonderful to see what King Henry III looked like!!! So cool!!!

I've been trying to run down the connection between King Henry III and roses . . . The Wars of the Roses not coming along until quite some time after his demise.

I can't find it. That bugs me.

Here are the roses used in the Royal Badges of England from Henry lll to Elizabeth l. Henry lll, shown on this coin was a Plantagenet, and his plant symbol was a spring of broom, so why the coin shows four roses on its back is a mystery to me. But Edward l adopted a golden rose, followed by Edward lll with the golden rose. When the Plantagenet succession ended, the House of Lancaster adopted the Red Rose, and the House of York the White Rose. Thus the War of Roses. The Tudors took over, and they used the Tudor Rose, sort of a specialized design, I guess. This symbol was used through Elizabeth l. So the mystery remains as to the four roses on the back of this gorgeous coin. I'm sure we can dig up the reason for those roses. Diane

Well, I really thought I could, but it eludes me. It looks very much like the rose didn't come into use until the House of Lancaster.

In Garden Shrubs and Their Histories, Alice M. Coats writes, "The white rose was the badge of Eleanor of Provence, who married Henry III in 1236, and descended from her to her son, Edward I--though he seems to have transformed it into a golden one. Her second son, Edmund, first Earl of Lancaster, became by marriage Count of Champagne, and resided much in Provins in the first years after his wedding in 1275; he brought back from there a red rose which he subsequently adopted for his emblem. The badges were therefore in the family generations before the famous brawl in the Temple gardens that sparked off the Wars of the Roses."

So maybe they do have an early connection to the War of the Roses.

That has to be it. In using the roses, he was including Eleanore's crest on his coin.

In Henry VIII’s time, there was such a thing as the Tudor rose, which combined the red and white of Lancaster and York to symbolize the end of that problem.

Isnt there a rose called ”York and Lancaster” available today?

Great thread…

Really great reasoning skills here! :) :)

@SylviaWW 9a Hot dry SoCal yes there is, have a look at HMF 'York and Lancaster' Rose (helpmefind.com)

Mette, what a fascinating history! So Y&L is a striped damask… although in all the photos on HMF, it seems pink. I especially loved the rose propagation advice from 1657 (on the HMF page). It was a very goode yeare🙂!

Henry II: for comparison had a silver coin attributed to him as Henry II of Jerusalem.

This Henry is holding an orb and a sword, in place of an orb and a ?Scots Broom twig.

The back of the coin doesn't have the four roses, but does have four somethings. Not that the average serf would know a silver or gold coin, but those who might have seen one or both might recognize the four on the backside style was continued.

FWIW still looking for roses in images from this time.

Interesting! And Henry II has no beard.

The gold coin sold for 648,000 pounds at auction.

Bought by an individual collector

I would love to have that coin. :) :) But, finances being what they are. :) :)

Carol - I didn't know any of that! So interesting!! Thank you!

OMG! Ha, ha. I just caught that the coin is one from the reign of Henry the 3rd not 8th! Well, umm. Heh. If Henry the 8th HAD minted a coin with 4 roses, it MIGHT have followed my reasoning and raised my questions, right? 😂 Anyway, surely Edward was just pulling the golden fleece over our eyes when he invented a gold rose! Carol