158 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 
For the first time also the title of Rex Hibeeniae was assumed, 
and, as we know, the Act of Parliament which recognised that title was 
passed in the thirty -fifth year of Henry the Eighth's reign, it ap- 
pears more than probable that coins displaying this new regal rank 
cannot have been issued earlier, although they may have been struck 
by the King's order at the mint during the previous year, preparatory 
to their being put into circulation so soon as the novel title was legally 
recognised. A few specimens of these earlier t osteons are known, 
struck in good silver, but they are few, and were probably what col- 
lectors call trial or pattern pieces ; but Henry evidently thought this a 
needless waste, and assumed that the magnificence of his new rank 
ought to compensate his subjects for employing a baser kind of metal 
in making his current coin. 
The thirty-sixth and thirty-seventh years of Henry's reign brought 
about a lower degree of debasement. A composition consisting of one- 
half silver melted with one-half of alloy was employed, and it is to 
these later years that the testoons of the Bristol Mint which I wish to 
dwell on are ascribed. They were struck under Sir William Sharington, 
Mint Master, who was employed to a great extent in fabricating coins 
of similar defective value for circulation in Ireland. "We have no 
difficulty in recognising the coins which Sir William Sharington was 
responsible for, as they have his distinctive mint mark impressed on 
them — a cypher consisting of the letters W. and S. joined. 
The subsequent history of Sir William Sharington' s connexion 
with the coinage of England is a remarkable one. Eecent investiga- 
tions by Mr. John Evans, published in the Numismatic Chronicle, 
have established satisfactorily the fact that, after the death of 
Henry YIII., gold coins were issued from different English mints 
which still bore his inscription, but possess a youthful monarch's 
portrait, substituted for that of bluff King Henry, and there can be 
no reasonable doubt that his base silver coin continued to be minted 
without alteration of dies until about the year 1549, when tardy 
efforts were made to improve the wretched debased coinage and raise 
the silver standard. 
Sir William Sharington held office as Master of the Bristol Mint, 
which was in full operation until the fall of Lord Seymour, of Sudeley, 
High Admiral of England, on January 17th, 1549, nearly two years 
after the death of Henry, when Seymour was committed to the Tower 
and accused of conspiring with Sharington to counterfeit for him large 
sums of debased coin and light money. Sharington' s confession of his 
guilt followed, and he admitted having struck no less than £12,000 in 
