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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Bardolph, post: 8277093, member: 96174&quot;]Absolutely wonderful, splendid coins. I wasn&#039;t aware of their existence, but that&#039;s no so surprising really. I collect French coins but in medieval and Renaissance France, almost every bishop, count or other noble seems to have minted his own coinage at one time or another - very different from England where the privilege of minting coin was a jealously guarded Royal prerogative.</p><p>Because of the huge numbers of feudal coins, I stick to Royal silver coins, and there are plenty of those, as my budget rarely stretches to gold.</p><p>One interesting thing about these florin is that more than usual prominence is given to Francois&#039; wife, Louise Margaret of Lorraine: LVD. MARGAR. LOTHAR. (Lotharingia, the Latin name of Lorraine). She was his second wife, he married her in1605 when she was 17 years old.</p><p>This makes me wonder if these coins were produced for this special event and were not intended for general circulation. I remember reading an article (by Crusafont? or perhaps Glenn Murray? ) on the 20 gold excelentes of Isabel and Fernando. These were high prestige coins and were given as tokens of thanks and/or affection to people who had rendered them special services.</p><p>I assume that the mintage figures of these gold florin would be very low, so perhaps Francois de&nbsp;&nbsp; Bourbon followed a tradition, minted coins for a special occasion and distributed them to the guests</p><p>On looking on the Net I also see that he minted silver deniers - perhaps for everyday use or giving out as largesse, to less important people - who knows?[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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