POST MEDIEVAL COIN WEIGHT

1547

Cast copper alloy coin weight. A square double sided weight with a stamped, incuse crowned upper case H on the obverse and stamped incuse letters in three lines:D/V/XV(dot). Paul Withers kindly identified the weight as follows:This is a weight for a double henri d’or of Henri II of France (1547-59). This coin was issued at an official weight of 5 deniers and 17 grains. I suspect that under all the corrosion on the piece you may find that there are two dots after the XV, not just the obvious one. Mr Dieudonné, who wrote the almost impossible-to-follow book on the subject says that the pair of weights that they have in the Bibliotheque Nationale, weigh 6.72 and 6.92 gm, which is about right. Square weights are the norm for this reign. Dieudonné doesn’t record a weight of this rather plain type –, with just a crowned H and its weight on the reverse. The ones that he records both have the king’s portrait on the obverse, with the weight indicated on the reverse, as on this one. This, we feel is probably because they were made at the Paris mint, whilst your plainer one, was probably made (pure conjecture, though based on experience of 35 years) at Lyon, which was later to become the weight and scale-making centre of the country.