Discover the Heritage of the Mythical Yale

The Queen’s Beasts Collection is a series of ten coins from The Royal Mint. Inspired by the ancestral beasts of heraldry, myth and legend that have watched over Her Majesty The Queen since her coronation in 1953, these mythical, ancient creatures – lions, a griffin, a falcon, a bull, a yale, a greyhound, a dragon, a unicorn and a horse – have been celebrated by The Royal Mint since 2017. We are excited to release the Yale of Beaufort into The Queen’s Beasts Collection. It follows the Red Dragon of Wales and the Black Bull of Clarence which were released in 2018, the year of the 65th anniversary of the coronation of The Queen.

The yale is a mythical beast, described in ancient times 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 is able to swivel each of its horns independently so if the leading horn gets damaged in battle, the other horn can swivel around and be used as a prominent weapon. 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.