Museum
Elizabethan gold angel
Description
An Elizabethan gold angel c. 1578-81. Mint mark a cross. According to the 1937 Catalogue this coin first appeared in the English series in the reign of Henry VI and was apparently derived from the Anglo-Gallic coinage. The type was always, on the obverse, the Archangel Michael spearing a devil or dragon, on the reverse a ship with a mast in the form of a cross. The angel was sometimes presented to persons coming to the Monarch to be Touched for 'the king's evil', or scrofula, because Michael was associated with driving out evil in the form of illness.
