431, Lot: 565. Estimate $300. Sold for $300. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

TUDOR. Henry VIII. 1509-1547. AR Halfgroat (19mm, 1.29 g, 5h). Second coinage. Canterbury mint, under Archbishop Thomas Cramner; im: Catherine wheel/–. Struck circa 1534. Crowned bust right / Coat-of-arms over long cross fourchée; T C flanking. Whitton group vi; North 1804; SCBC 2345. Good VF, attractively toned.

Ex J. Eric Engstrom Collection (Classical Numismatic Group 102, 18 May 2016), lot 1516; Classical Numismatic Group Inventory 871725 (June 2010).

Archbishop Cramner annulled the marriage between Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon in May 1534. The reasoning behind the choice of the Catherine Wheel as mint mark for his coinage at Canterbury at this time remains unexplained. As Lord Stewartby states ‘it could hardly have been a cynical reference to his part in removing the Queen’.