This is not about the equivalent of the “Beast of Dartmore” or “Beast of Exmoor”, and not a big cat lurking in Thetford Forest or on the banks of the Broads. Such reports are two a penny. This is something probably rarer - a fourteenth century gold coin, of which fewer examples survive than of the gold penny of King Henry III about which I posted recently.
The leopard was in fact the next attempt by an English monarch to establish a gold currency. In 1344 King Edward IiI minted the leopard worth 3 shillings, the double leopard worth 6 shillings and the helm worth 1/6. Like his great grandfather’s 1257 gold penny it was not a success, being outside the normal sequence of accounting values, and not at a suitable relation to the existing silver currency. A few years later the King tried again and established one of the quintessential coins of English numismatics, the gold noble with its image of the King in the ship. We lost however the splendidly jaunty leopard with his heraldic cape from the imagery of the coinage with the withdrawal of the leopard from circulation. The design, as with the noble, is a great tribute to the artistic skill of the royal moneyers of the earlier fourteenth century.
The one found in Norfolk last year was with an early noble which suggests the leopard remained in circulation longer than had been thought - as a piece of specie it would of course retain its value.
The discovery of the coin was reported in June last year by the BBC News at Detectorist finds rare gold coin from plague era, and there is more about it and its sale from the Smithsonian Magazine at Amateur Treasure Hunter Unearths Rare 14th-Century Gold Coin
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