CHAPTER 13: The Early Copper Liards (Oorden) - The Dutch Revolt
= Late 16th Century =Pure copper coins for the smallest denominations -
duiten and
double mites (1/3 duit) - turned up in the Low Countries in the early 1500s. The town of Utrecht and the province of Brabant are examples of early adopters. For
liards, or
oorden in the Dutch speaking areas, there were some early examples of tokens, like the
armenpenningen (tokens for the poor) in the town of Delft (1531 and onwards).
The first regular oord for general use was - as far as I know - minted in 1573 by the town of
Leiden, Holland, during the revolt against Spain. It precedes the formation of the Dutch Republic and was minted while Leiden was formally under Spanish rule, but it makes no reference to Spain and is usually considered as a Dutch coin, not a Spanish Netherlands coin. It is very rare and I have not tried seriously to find one.
As a reminder: The Low Countries used the
gulden (or florin), divided into 20
stuivers, the stuiver in turn divided into 4
oorden. Then there were also the
groot = 2 oorden and the
duit = ½ oord = 6 mites. The important thing here, though, is that
1 oord = 1/80 gulden, just like
1 liard = 1/80 livre, and the gulden and the livre tournois were similar in value. Consequently, liards and oorden were, more or less, of the same value (and in the literature, oorden are sometimes called liards). (Another reminder:
oorden is the Dutch plural for
oord and is the form I will use here.)
I will say a bit more about the name "oord" in the next Chapter, but now let's get started! (And if you are not interested in the historical background, just scroll down until you see the coins.)
The Dutch RevoltGhent, Flanders province. November 8, 1576, 10 am. From the town hall balcony, it is proclaimed that an agreement has been reached: The provinces of the Netherlands shall jointly drive out the Spanish troops and
"restore the citizens to their rights, privileges, and liberties and their former prosperity".
For years, the Low Countries had rebelled against Spain. Disparate groups in the various provinces had fought the Spanish troops, sometimes in loose alliances, but mostly without consistency and coordination. Over the last year, however, the Spanish troops had begun to mutiny and attack cities just to pillage and ravage (Spain was out of money and could not pay its soldiers). Four days before the balcony proclamation, the city of Antwerp, the financial and cultural center of the Netherlands, had been sacked and thousands killed. In Ghent, representatives from most of the Seventeen Provinces of the Netherlands had already been in session for weeks. Now, with the
Pacification of Ghent, they took an important step towards unity, on a path that two years later would lead to the formation of the independent Dutch Republic.
The Pacification of Ghent in 1576. Allegorical representation with the Netherlands lion protecting the Garden of Holland, with its 17 maidens representing the provinces, from the Spanish troops.
Source: From Nederlandtsche gedenck-clanck, Adriaen van de Venne,1626. Wikipedia, public domain.Let us go back two decades in time to find the background to all this.
Gout and other health issues plagued Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain etc Charles V (the guy with the Franche-Comte liard in the previous Chapter) towards the end of his long reign. In 1555, he passed the lordship over the
Spanish Netherlands (aka the
Habsburg Netherlands aka the
Seventeen Provinces) to his son
Philip II of Habsburg, who in 1556 also became king of Spain and its possessions. The Spanish Empire encompassed not only Spain and the Low Countries, but also Burgundy, possessions in Italy, huge territories in the Americas, and the West Indies. It was the superpower of its time. One might think that Philip would not pay much attention to the small corner of the empire made up by the Low Countries. Quite the contrary, they were important from both a strategic and economic point of view, positioned in between France, England and the Holy Roman Empire (which had gone to Philip's brother Ferdinand), and being a center for trade and finance. In fact, Philip had his court in the capital Brussels for the first several years of his rule as king of Spain.
Philip II of Habsburg.
Source: Painting by Sofonisba Anguissola, 1565. Wikipedia, public domain.Philip worked hard to incorporate his 17 provinces into the rest of his empire, to fit them into the imperial hierarchy and have them contribute to the empire's economy and military endeavors. And, not least, to make its inhabitants stick to the Catholic faith and resist the Protestant heresy that kept spreading. Unfortunately for Philip, his Netherlands subjects did not fully appreciate his efforts. They continued to assert their centuries-old customary privileges and (limited) self-rule they had enjoyed under former rulers. As to faith, they were happy to try the new Calvinism, and wanted to do so without the Spanish Inquisition coming down on them (which it did, without much mercy).
Resistance, insurrection and rebellion began in the mid 1560s. It escalated over the following decade and developed into what became known as the
Eighty Years' War. There is no need to go into details here - there is plenty of information elsewhere and whole books have been written about the events. Here I will content myself with what I have said so far and move on to the coins!
As mentioned, copper coins had been used before for the tiniest denominations, smaller than an oord. The province of Holland, which together with Zeeland had been most tenacious in the struggle against Spain, was first to introduce copper coins for
oorden, in 1573. It was part of a scheme of issuing over-valued coins (which included also silver coins) and use the surplus to finance the war. The idea appealed to the States General of the Netherlands and in 1577 they instructed the province mints to take similar measures and issue "States coins" (
Statenmunten), in all denominations. The Holland coinage we shall look at in the next Chapter, here we look at a couple of coins from other provinces.
The Statenoorden (Liards des etats)As part of the Statenmunten scheme, copper oorden -
statenoorden - were introduced by the provinces Brabant, Flanders, Tournai, Guelders, Overijssel and Zeeland. They shared the same design, only with different mintmarks and the king's titles adapted to each province. (In French speaking parts, such as Tournai, one spoke of
liards des etats.) Here are two statenoorden, very similar as you can see.
Oord (statenoord), Brabant (Spanish Netherlands) 1578-1580, Philip II of Spain, Antwerp. Copper. 6.65 g, 25.5 mm. Vanhoudt 381.AN.
Obverse: PHS D G HISP Z REX DVX BRA (Philippus Dei Gratia Hispaniarum et [cetera] Rex, Dux Brabantiae / Philip by Grace of God King of the Spains etc, Duke of Brabant). Bust of Philip II. Hand at bottom, mintmark for Antwerp.
Reverse: PACE ET IVSTITIA (Peace and Justice). Crowned shield with the arms for Philip II as ruler of the Spanish Netherlands, surrounded by collar of the Order of the Golden Fleece.
Oord (statenoord), Overijssel (Spanish Netherlands) 1578-1579, Philip II of Spain, Hasselt (Overijssel). Copper. 6.38 g, 25.5 mm. Vanhoudt 381.HS.
Obverse: PHS D G HISP Z REX DO' TRS' ISSVL (Philippus Dei Gratia Hispaniarum et [cetera] Rex, Dominus Transissulaniae / Philip by Grace of God King of the Spains etc, Lord of Overijssel). Bust of Philip II. Shield with cross (Hasselt city arms) at bottom, mintmark for Hasselt.
Reverse: As previous coin.
Overall, the design is not unlike earlier higher denomination silver coins: Philip II on the obverse, his coat of arms on the reverse. Despite the years of rebellion and now forcing the Spanish troops to leave, Philip is still recognized as ruler. But let us look closer at the reverse.
The first thing to note is that the king's motto,
Dominus mihi adiutor (God is my helper), has been replaced by
Pace et Iustitia (Peace and Justice). This was done completely arbitrarily by the States General, and was of course meant to send a message to both the population using the coins and to the king: The States General is restoring order, and not with the help of the
king's God. Philip did
not like the alteration, and even though there was not much he could do about their use in the Netherlands, he persuaded his nephew Rudolf II, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, to ban use of the coins in his countries (which was more important for the larger statenmunten denominations).
Apart from the replaced motto, the reverse is loyal to the king, with his coat of arms and the Golden Fleece collar. What are those, really?
The coat of arms is a reduced version compared to the full one that Philip would use in Spain and which has some 17 parts (the full coat of arms is used on many coins of the Spanish Netherlands, but especially during this period the reduced version seems popular). Top left we have Austria, top right modern (well, back then at least) Burgundy, bottom left ancient Burgundy, bottom right Brabant's lion. In the center, Flanders's lion. The coat of arms is Philip's personal one and was the same for all coins, regardless of which province they were from. Thus, the arms of Overijssel (another lion, on top of a wavy band) is not shown on the Overijssel coin, all coins show the Brabant and Flanders lions. It follows the principle used earlier for Spanish Netherlands coins, with same type used all over but with localized titles (and mintmark).
The Order of the Golden Fleece was founded in 1430 to defend the Roman Catholic religion. Like his father Charles V, Philip II was grand master of the order. Reserved for Catholics from the highest nobility, the order was the most prestigious and influential order of its time, so it's no wonder that Philip wears it on many of his portraits and has it on some of his coins.
Now back to the obverse. Not much to say about Philip's portrait, it is the same as on earlier coins. But let us pay some attention to the inscriptions, let's analyze the Overijssel coin. The apostrophes in DO' TRS' mark that the words are abbreviated: DO' = Dominus, TRS' = Trans. There are plenty of other abbreviations in the inscription, but presumably those are considered so well known that it is not necessary to point them out. Then we have the Z with a stroke. With or without a stroke, that is a common symbol for Latin "et", that is, "and". I have here interpreted it as "et
cetera", since the title
"King of the Spains and" really is missing something.
Then we have "the Spains". Spelled out and filling out the "cetera", Philip's title is
Philippus Dei Gratia Hispaniarum et Indiarum Rex, that is,
Philip by Grace of God King of the Spains and the Indies. (Used to French coins with
Francorum Rex - "King of the Franks" - I first read this as "King of the Spaniards and the Indians". "Of the Spaniards" seemed logical, "of the Indians" looked odd. Revisiting Latin grammar, I soon found out that "of the Spaniards" is
Hispanorum Rex and
Hispaniarum is the plural genitive of
Hispania, Spain.) If we take "the Indies" first, that doesn't look too strange, we still talk about the "West Indies" - although here it includes not only the modern West Indies but also large parts of South and North America. But was there more than one Spain? Yes, there was! Castile, León, Aragon, Granada, Navarre, and more - those were once independent kingdoms, later collected under one king, and there we have "the Spains". Over time, it evolved to include Spanish possessions on all continents. The present king, Felipe VI, calls himself "King of Spain". The last monarch to use the term "the Spains" was queen Isabella II, who ruled 1833-1868.
What about Philip's other possessions, Italy and the Low Countries, for instance? Well, he was king of Naples, king of Sicily, king of Jerusalem (at least in his mind), but we don't see that on his Spanish Netherlands coins. As for the Low Countries, he was
Lord, not King, of the
Seventeen Provinces, where he was Duke of Brabant, Count of Flanders, etc - in principle a separate title for each province (in reality it was a bit more intricate, but no need to go into more details here).
A final remark: As pointed out by tdziemia in one of the first posts in this thread, there are
two Hasselts in the Low Countries that have issued coins: One up here in the north, in Overijssel, another further south near Liège. In Chapter 21 I will show a coin from
that Hasselt.
Phew, that was a lot. Holland and the rest will have to wait until the next Chapter!
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Posted 05/09/2024 4:25 pm
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. But looking closely and counting fingers, I now have faith in that she is on the pious side. 
