Soft back, 32 pages, Illustrated B&W, 15cm x 21cm

This inexpensive, but well illustrated Shire album is an excellent introduction to an often neglected series of coins.

Contents:

• The beginning: pennies of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
• New coins: David II to Robert III
• Lions and unicorns: the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
• Mary, queen of Scots
• James VI and the union of the crowns
• The seventeenth century to the act of union
• Further reading
• Places to visit

On the back cover:

Few people realise that the thistle on the modern British five pence piece is a reminder of what was once a seperate Scottish coinage. King David I was the first Scottish monarch to issue his own coins, in the twelfth century. For over two hundred years only silver pennies were minted but from the fourteenth century a succession of new types and values appeared, including gold nobles, unicorns, ducats, unites, silver ryals, merks and dollars. Minor coins include billon placks, hardheads and nonsunts as well as copper turners and bawbees. Superb portraits are to be found on the coins of James V and Charles I. The Scottish coinage was one of endless change and variety, among the most interesting of medieval Europe, and was only brought to an end following the Act of Union in 1707.