Centuries of Heritage, Captured in Gold

During Her Majesty The Queen’s coronation in Westminster Abbey in 1953, she was guarded by ten awe-inspiring statues of heraldry, myth and legend. Throughout her reign, these beasts have stood by, watching dutifully throughout her historic reign. Shrouded in ancestry and royal authority, these beasts trace royal bloodlines from medieval times to the present day.

The sixth coin in The Queen’s Beasts Collection is the mythical Yale of Beaufort, following the release of the Red Dragon of Wales and the Black Bull of Clarence in 2018, the year of the 65th anniversary of the coronation of The Queen. First written about by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History, the yale is described as the size of a hippopotamus with the tail of an elephant, the jaws of a boar and of a black or tawny colour. It descends to The Queen through Henry VII, who inherited it from his mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, who had played a central role in the Wars of the Roses. Her position as matriarch of the Tudor dynasty gave the yale prestige and symbolic meaning.