The silver three-

farthing Farthing or farthings may refer to: Coinage *Farthing (British coin), an old British coin valued one quarter of a penny ** Half farthing (British coin) ** Third farthing (British coin) ** Quarter farthing (British coin) * Farthing (English c ...

( d) coin was introduced in

Queen Elizabeth I Elizabeth I (7 September 153324 March 1603) was Queen of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death in 1603. Elizabeth was the last of the five House of Tudor monarchs and is sometimes referred to as the "Virgin Queen". Eli ...

's third and fourth coinages (1561–1582), as part of a plan to produce large quantities of coins of varying denominations and high metal content. The

obverse Obverse and its opposite, reverse, refer to the two flat faces of coins and some other two-sided objects, including paper money, flags, seals, medals, drawings, old master prints and other works of art, and printed fabrics. In this usage, ...

shows a left-facing bust of the queen, with a rose behind her and the legend E D G ROSA SINE SPINA – Elizabeth,

by the grace of God By the Grace of God ( la, Dei Gratia, abbreviated D.G.) is a formulaic phrase used especially in Christian monarchies as an introductory part of the full styles of a monarch. For example in England and later the United Kingdom, the phrase was fo ...

a rose without a thorn – while the reverse shows the royal arms with the date above the arms and a

mint mark A mint mark is a letter, symbol or an inscription on a coin indicating the mint where the coin was produced. It should not be confused with a mintmaster mark which is the mark of the mintmaster. History Mint marks were first developed to locate ...

at the beginning of the legend reading CIVITAS LONDON –

City of London The City of London is a city, ceremonial county and local government district that contains the historic centre and constitutes, alongside Canary Wharf, the primary central business district (CBD) of London. It constituted most of London f ...

, the Tower Mint. The three-farthings coin closely resembles the three-halfpence coin, differing only in the diameter, which is 14 millimetres for an unclipped coin, compared to 16 mm for the three-halfpence. All the coins are hammered, except for the extremely rare milled three-farthings of 1563, of which only three examples are known to exist.

References

Coins of England Tudor England 16th-century economic history {{Coin-stub