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Cromwell Halfcrown, 1658
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CromwellCoins - Known Facts - 5 periods of production

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Value of silver to gold
Gold / Silver Proportion
5 audit periods1
Monthly production

          Known varieties for each denomination are listed under SunandAnchor

Surviving numbers Produced per month
Rarity and Variety by Audit Period

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          Shown are the audited numbers for the Tower mint by value in pounds. During the reign reign of Charles I almost every year had an audit and key numbers for gold and silver coinage made in that period. With the Parliament takeover of the mint in 1642 audits slipped. Complicating matters, there is no confirmation of the mintmarks in use so it is not possible to have yearly numbers. The Battle of Edgehill on 23rd October 1642 occured after the king raised his standard in Nottingham on 22nd August 1642. The period following saw the highest output of the mint between 1642 and 1645. In June 1645 the king was bankrupt and Naseby effectively ended the first Civil War. After that the mint slowed down and production subsided to a very low level between April 1647 and May 1649 - £153,286.

There were only 5 periods of audited results during the Commonwealth Period and those can be seen starting 16th May 1649.   

           The mix of coinage has been normalised so the relationship can be clearly seen without the noise of volume variation from year to year. Early in Charles I reign the value numbers are high since gold coinage was 90% of the coins made. That changed around 1632 and silver quantities rose as gold quantities fell to less than 10% during the Civil War key battles. So essentially gold availability fell with the progression of hostilities. If you mint one example of each denomination the value of gold made would be £1.75 compared to silver at £0.45. A factor of almost 4. So 80% silver to 20% gold is close to equal value of both metals. In the first  period of the Commonwealth, gold and silver were running very close. From 1652 gold fell away in terms of volume so silver dominated.  The previous graph shows the thruput at the mint was very low from 1658 to 1660 - £1,822 (5%) in gold and in silver £33,728 (95%).  

         The results of the five audit periods show the dramatic variations during the Commonwealth Period. One should remember these periods are not equal in time. Also no silver was minted in 1650. So it is useful to make monthly averages for mint output.

          This plot possibly gives a better idea of how mint output really varied. The 1649 to 1651 numbers include no output for the year 1650. No further meaningful detail is available so we may never know the yearly out of the mint from their records.

            Taking the number of survival coins and dividing by the number of months in each period provides another perspective of the relative number of coins made.

            The rarity of anchor coinage is obvious in this plot as well as the preceding plot. During the sun period it appears that the shilling and halfcrown denominations dominated while in the anchor years the shilling alone dominated.

            Yearly numbers for surviving coinage follow a similar pattern. The two big years - 1653 and 1656 - are clearly visible. Also the split between 1649 and 1651 is very much in favour of 1651.