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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Johnsl, post: 2001913, member: 31862&quot;]Three wives - on both English and Irish coins</p><p>H K - Katherine of Aragon</p><p>H A - Anne Boleyn</p><p>H I - Jayne Seymour</p><p>Thereafter the coins that carried the initials carry a H R&nbsp; (Rex in place of the wife&#039;s initial).</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>There are several explanations going around - in my opinion the most obvious is that the fourth wife (Anne of Cleves) required a repeat of the A already used for Anne Boleyn - as would wives 5 and 6 (Kathryn Howard and Katherine Parr) have to repeat the use of the K. So the &#039;face saving&#039; argument has always seemed to me the most straightforward explanation.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>The initials are carried by two English coins; the gold crown of the double rose and its half, and by two Irish coins; the silver harp groat and its half.&nbsp; The first, second and fourth are rare and expensive but the Irish harp groat is fairly common and moderately priced (comparatively).&nbsp; Of these the last coin, the Irish half harp groat occurs with the three wives but not with the later H R (pending future discovery, of course).</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>This is my H &amp; I harp groat - the Seaby/Spink plate coin and probably the finest known :</p><p><br /></p><p><img src="http://www.irishcoinage.com/JPEGS/J00050X4.JPG" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>And this is my H &amp; A half groat - not the finest known but one of only 7 or 8 extant :</p><p><img src="http://www.irishcoinage.com/JPEGS/J01203X4.JPG" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>(note that the smaller half groat uses similar sized letters for the initials so you can tell that it&#039;s a half without a scale because of how they fill the area either side of the harp - very useful to avoid buying a rare half on Ebay and getting a groat in the post - I&#039;ve counted at least 3 groats listed as halves - unfortunately never the other way around).</p><p><br /></p><p>Sorry I don&#039;t have a photo of a H &amp; K&nbsp; or a H &amp; R to hand.</p><p><br /></p><p>The Bristol testoon is pretty nice - but the London one is really spectacular, I didn&#039;t know that there was a surviving example as nice as that, most that I have viewed have been very unattractive and still fetched very good prices.</p><p><br /></p><p>JSL.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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