Coronation of King William III and Queen Mary II
John Roettiers (1631- London 1703)
Category
Coins and medals
Date
1689
Materials
Silver
Measurements
357 mm (Diameter)
Place of origin
London
Order this imageCollection
Osterley Park and House, London
NT 773277
Summary
Silver, the Coronation of King William III (1650-1702) and Queen Mary II (1662-94), by John Roettiers (1631-1703), struck London, United Kingdom, 1689. A silver medal by John Roettiers, the official commemoration medal for the Coronation of King William III and Queen Mary II, which took place in Westminster Abbey on 11 April 1689. The obverse depicts conjoined and draped bust portraits in profile of the two monarchs, facing right, with the Latin legend ‘William and Mary King and Queen’. The reverse has a depiction of Jupiter, king of the gods, emerging from clouds at top right to hurl his thunderbolts towards Phaethon, who tumbles from his chariot. Legends read ‘That it may not all be consumed’ and ‘Crowned, 11 April 1689’.
Full description
The medal was the official medal for the coronation of William and Mary, which took place in Westminster Abbey on 11 April 1689. After the flight of King James in December 1688, William set out before Parliament the terms under which he and his wife, who was the true heir, would be prepared to accept the throne. In particular, William demanded that he be allowed to reign alongside his wife as king in his own right, rather than simply as a consort, and that he should also be permitted to continue as sole monarch, in the event of his wife pre-deceasing him. The Coronation service in Westminster Abbey had to be performed by the Bishop of London, Henry Compton, since the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Sancroft, had refused to recognise the removal of James II/VII as monarch. On the same day as the English Coronation, the Convention of the Estates of Scotland declared that James had forfeited the throne of that nation and invited William and Mary to take it, which they accepted on 11 May. The Coronation ceremony was unprecedented in that it involved the crowning of not one but two monarchs, meaning that both Mary and William were seated in specially made coronation chairs. The two new sovereigns were required too to take a different form of coronation oath from that sworn by James, who had in accordance with tradition vowed to confirm the laws and customs granted to the English people by his predecessors. Mary and William, on the other hand, had to undertake to govern according to the statutes set by Parliament and were also specifically required to take an oath to maintain the Protestant religion. Mary felt scruples about the 'pomp and vanity' of the ceremony and what she regarded as an undue stress on the Anglican communion within it. The message of Protestant triumph is evident on the reverse of this medal, issued for distribution to spectators at the ceremony of the Coronation, and which Edward Hawkins in his Medallic Illustrations suggested ‘far exceeds in beauty of workmanship all the other medals commemorating this event.’ The reverse depicts the classical myth of Phaethon, a famous moral tale warning against attempting to go beyond ones capabilities. The son of the sun-god Helios, Phaethon begged his father to allow him for one hour a day to drive his chariot across the sky. The young man took the reins of the chariot, with its team of four horses, which he very quickly found himself unable to control. When Phaethon suddenly came across the scorpion of the Zodiac he dropped the reins in terror, causing the horses to bolt and the earth to catch fire. The situation was rescued by Jupiter who threw a thunderbolt at the chariot, wrecking it and sending it hurtling into the river Eridanus, where Phaethon died and was buried by nymphs. The reverse design was intended to function as an allegory of King James’s misrule and downfall, implying that William, in the guise of Jupiter, had rescued the country from the near disasters brought upon it by the vainglorious Phaethon/James. However, supporters of James chose to interpret the reverse differently, as an emblem of William and Mary courting disaster by seizing the reins of Mary’s father’s chariot. Other Jacobite supporters suggested that the scene alluded to the last queen of Rome, Tullia minor, who was said to have driven her chariot over the remains of her dethroned father. Although John Roettiers is generally regarded as having designed the medal, his two sons James and Norbert declared that they had made it (Woolf, Medallic Record, p. 27). John Roettiers was reluctant to work for William III, so it may be that the sons were in some way shielding their father. Jeremy Warren 2019
Provenance
Given to the National Trust in 1993 by George Child Villiers, 9th Earl of Jersey (1910-1998).
Marks and inscriptions
Obverse, legend: GVLIELMVS. ET. MARIA. REX. ET. REGINA. Reverse, legend: NE TOTVS ABSVMATVR Reverse, exergue: INAGVRAT. II. AP. 1689
Makers and roles
John Roettiers (1631- London 1703), medallist
References
Hawkins, Franks and Grueber 1885: Edward Hawkins, Augustus W. Franks and Herbert A. Grueber (eds.), Medallic Illustrations of the History of Great Britain and Ireland to the death of George II, 2 vols., London 1885, vol. I, pp. 662-63, no. 25. Wollaston 1978: Henry Wollaston, The Commemorative Collectors Guide to British Official Medals for Coronations and Jubilees, Nottingham 1978, pp. 7-8, no. 8. Woolf 1988: Noel Woolf, The Medallic Record of the Jacobite Movement, London 1988, p. 27, no. 10:1. Mitchiner 1988-2007: Michael Mitchiner, Jetons, Medalets and Tokens, 4 vols., London 1988-2007, vol. III (British Isles circa 1588 to 1830), 1998, p. 1698, no. 82.1 (4933). Eimer 2010: Christopher Eimer, British Commemorative Medals and their Values, London 2010, p. 66, no. 312, pl. 40.