A Laurel is a gold coin worth 20 shillings and these coins were only struck during the reign of James I. As the first self-styled king of Great Britain, the Latin inscriptions on the coin, which translate as ‘James by the Grace of God, King of Great Britain, France and Ireland’ on the obverse, and ‘I will make them one nation’ on the reverse, show how he politicised coinage to imply the union of the crowns. This coin features a Rose mint mark which indicates it was struck between 24 June 1620 and 8 June 1621.