DD15: Britannia, From Hadrian to the Hundred Pound Coin

The Britannia gold coin carries a face value of one hundred pounds and holds just over an ounce of gold. The woman on it is older than England. She first appeared on a Roman coin about nineteen centuries ago, was borrowed by Stuart kings to claim the seas, sat for two centuries on the copper in British pockets, and in 1987 was put back on gold to fight a South African rival. This is how a Roman province became Britain's bullion coin.

A Roman province with a spear

Britannia began as Rome's picture of a conquered place. The Royal Mint Museum explains that Rome personified its territories as women, and that under the Emperor Hadrian a coin "struck in Rome in c. 119, features Britannia holding a spear and seated on rocks, or possibly a wall, with the inscription BRITANNIA". The Bank of England's own history, Britannia and the Bank, dates Hadrian's Britannia sestertius to "about A.D. 134". The two institutions differ by fifteen years, so the honest answer is the 120s or 130s AD.

When Rome left, so did she. The Royal Mint Museum records that the figure "would lapse after the fall of the Roman Empire" and found new life in the Elizabethan writings of John Dee, whose Britannia was linked to the sea "for the first time".

Charles II and the copper coinage

The Stuarts wanted her as a statement of naval power. Pattern coins of 1665 carried a Latin legend claiming the four seas, but in the museum's words the Dutch raid on the English fleet "in the Medway in 1667, made the claim feel quite hollow". When the new copper coins were issued, the boast was gone: "The first official copper coinage was struck in 1672."

The Bank of England's history gives the detail. The engraver Roettier's Britannia holds "an olive branch in her right hand", her shield "bears the combined crosses of St. George and St. Andrew", and "the blanks were imported from Sweden as the technical resources of the Mint were inadequate". It was "the first regular issue of copper coins in England".

Then the gossip. Samuel Pepys wrote that at his goldsmith's he saw the King's new medal with Frances Stuart's face, "and a pretty thing it is that he should choose her face to represent Britannia by". The Bank's historian is unpersuaded that a full length figure on a farthing can be a portrait: "accurate portraiture on so small a scale is scarcely possible." The story survives anyway.

Two and a half centuries on the coinage

From then on, says the Royal Mint Museum, "Britannia would appear on the reverse of at least some of the denominations of the coinage of every monarch." In 1797, the Bank's history records, her spear became "Neptune's trident" on the heavy cartwheel penny. The Bank itself adopted her in 1694, three days after its charter, as the device on its Common Seal.

She nearly vanished at decimalisation. When it appeared she would be dropped, "questions were asked in the House of Commons and she was reinstated on the reverse of the new 50p piece". She left the new circulating designs in 2008, but, the museum notes, "she still appears on gold and silver coins that bare her name". The misspelling is theirs.

1987: a coin to answer the Krugerrand

The gold Britannia was a commercial decision. "In 1987 the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson, issued a new bullion coin to counter the growing popularity of the South African Krugerrand," the Royal Mint Museum records, with a design by the artist Philip Nathan.

Its specification is a matter of law. A Royal Proclamation published in the London Gazette on 9 October 1987 ordered a new one hundred pound coin "of a standard weight of 34.050 grammes, a millesimal fineness of 916.66", which is 22 carat, showing "Britannia standing upon a rock in the sea, her right hand grasping a trident". Multiply it out and the coin held about 31.21 grammes of fine gold.

Today's coin is set by a later Proclamation of October 2017: "a standard weight of 31.21 grammes, a standard diameter of 32.69 millimetres, a millesimal fineness of not less than 999.9", with the inscription "ONE OUNCE 999.9 FINE GOLD BRITANNIA". The alloy changed, from crown gold to almost pure gold. The gold content barely moved.

One hundred pounds, or three thousand

The face value is not decoration. Under section 2 of the Coinage Act 1971, "Gold coins shall be legal tender for payment of any amount", unless worn below their least current weight. That status has a consequence in the tax authority's own manual. HMRC's Capital Gains Manual at CG78305 says that "Britannia gold coins are currency but, like all sterling currency, are exempt because of TCGA92/S21 (1)(b)", while "Coins which are currency but not sterling, for example Krugerrands, are chargeable assets." The coin built to rival the Krugerrand is treated differently from it. That is the law as HMRC states it: general information, not tax advice, and no recommendation of any kind. The same rule covers the gold sovereign.

Now the two numbers. Face value: one hundred pounds. Gold content: about 31.2 grammes. At the sterling price on our own markets feed at 07:08 UTC on 13 October 2026, £101.84 a gram, that gold is worth about £3,180. The figure stamped on the coin is less than a thirtieth of what is inside it.

Why it matters

Britannia was invented to mark a conquest, revived to claim the seas, and finally given an ounce of gold to compete in a market. Through every change the one constant was the metal under her feet. The face value says one hundred pounds; the gold has its own opinion.

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