Henry VII Half Penny (1485 - 1603)

This is another first for me. The day was dry but very windy and when I got my gear out of the car I realised I had forgotten my earphones. A windy day with no ear phones is not the ideal conditions for me, because as my dear wife often says "You never hear owt anyway!"

So off I went with the wind whistling louder in my ears than the usual background tinnitus I suffer from and still hoping beyond hope to hear a high pitched bleep to indicate I had located something - I might as well pack up now I thought, you'll never hear the signal. So, needless to say, I was having great difficulty hearing anything other than a constant cacophony of whistling sounds bouncing around my ear drums, when I thought 'Hold on' I might have just heard a tiny high pitched signal, so I wafted the head of the detector over the same spot again as I cocked my head to one side to concentrate (why do we do that?). I had no chance of making out whether it was a proper signal, never mind whether it was a good or bad signal (just hearing anything above the whistling disco going on in my head was amazing ) so I thought, what the heck I might as well dig it up and see if it is anything other than mud.

I was amazed to see that my perseverance had paid off as I held in my hand what I first thought was a hammered farthing, but with a bit of spit and a quick rub on my jacket, I thought no, it isn't a farthing, it's a Henry VIII halfpenny, but then after a bit more spitting and rubbing my face really lit up as I realised it was in actual fact a Henry VII halfpenny - now you just do not find one of these little beauties every day of the week. The various whistling sounds disappeared for a moment as I started to laugh and do a my little happy dance (come on admit it, we all do it when we find something a bit special). A Henry VII halfpenny, well I never.

King Henry VII by the way was Welsh and came to the English throne by conquest, defeating Richard III at Bosworth. He ended the Wars of the Roses by marriage to Elizabeth of York. When he died he left the country financially stable with a full treasure chest.