103676 | GREAT BRITAIN & NETHERLANDS. Gunpowder Plot silver Jeton.

103676  |  GREAT BRITAIN & NETHERLANDS. Gunpowder Plot silver Jeton. Issued 1605 to commemorate the discovery and failure of the plot to blow up King James I and the House of Lords (29mm, 5.70 g, 9h). Of uncertain Dutch manufacture.

 

* DETECTVS · QVI · LATVIT · S · C · (the concealed one is discovered), snake (the Jesuits) coiled rightward, surrounded by roses (England) and lis (France) // * NON DORMITASTI ANTISTES IACOBI (you, the keeper of James, have not slept, –adapted from Psalms), rayed name of God in Hebrew.

 

MI 196/19; Eimer 86; Dugnoille 3599; van Loon II, 22. PCGS MS-62. Deeply toned and exceptionally attractive for the type, with some minor—and rather typical—striking weakness. Rare in silver, and that much more so in such an elevated state of preservation. The only such example of the type in silver in the PCGS census.

 

Following the excommunication of Henry VIII from the Catholic Church and the creation of the Church of England, religious tension greatly increased in the realm, with practicing Catholics largely excluded from public or clerical office. After the installation of James VI of Scotland as King James I, the tension continued, even though James was somewhat more tolerant than his predecessor, Elizabeth I. A plot was then set forth that would attempt to blow up both the House of Lords and the king himself during his opening of Parliament on 5 November 1605. Correspondingly, the king's young daughter, Princess Elizabeth, would be installed as queen during rioting and uprising in the West Midlands. The plot, however, was discovered thanks to an anonymous tip in late October, with a search of the House of Lords on the night of 4 November revealing that a conspirator, Guy Fawkes, was present with 36 barrels of gunpowder—an amount that would easily level that branch of Parliament. Fawkes was arrested, and other co-conspirators were later rounded up after fleeing London, with those arrested being convicted and executed in January 1606.

 

In honor of the foiling of this attempted regicide, the 5th of November is celebrated with bonfires and fireworks, being known as "Bonfire Night" or even "Guy Fawkes Night." This day is even emblazoned through a popular nursery rhyme:

 

"Remember, remember,

The Fifth of November,

Gunpowder treason and plot;

For I see no reason

Why Gunpowder Treason

Should ever be forgot."

 

During some celebrations, effigies of Fawkes, for the purposes of burning, were created with masks meant to represent his face. In the 1980s, the "Guy Fawkes" mask became popularized through the graphic novel V for Vendetta, with it subsequently becoming synonymous more recently with various protest movements, such as the Occupy movement and the hacktivist collective "Anonymous."

 

Upload: 5 November 2026.

 

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