A couple made a stunning discovery of 70 gold Tudor coins while weeding their back garden (what a beautiful name). Credit: BNPS
A couple in southern England were working in their garden, adjusting a fence post. As they dug into the clay soil near their flower bed, they hit something unexpected—a handful of small, round objects. At first, they looked like bits of old metal. Then the mud came off, and the coins began to shine.
They had stumbled onto a hidden fortune from the reign of Henry VIII. And there was more.
The Flowerbed Treasure
The finding, which happened in 2020, came as a total shock. As they rinsed the dirt away under the tap, the details on the coins started to show. There was gold, silver, and centuries-old markings. The text includes portraits of kings, Latin text, and even the initials of two of Henry VIII’s wives: K for Katherine of Aragon and I for Jane Seymour.
“They were digging in a flower border and found these circular discs in a clump of clay soil,” said David Guest, the auctioneer now handling the sale, speaking to The Sun. “They put them on the decking and washed them off and realized they were gold coins…. then carried on digging and found a total of 64 of them in the same spot.”
The UK has a scheme for events like this. It’s called the Portable Antiquities Scheme, and it encourages people to declare the treasures they find. Archaeologists come on site to investigate and, if the objects are valuable, the people can get paid for it. In total, 70 coins were found. Most of them were in stunning condition, although they were dating from the 1420s through the 1530s. The hoard is now expected to sell for over £230,000 (more than $300,000) at an auction in Zurich on November 5.
A large number of the coins date back to the reign of Henry VIII including this one which was struck between 1513 and 1536. Credit: BNPS
Who Buried the Hoard?
The coins span the reigns of Henry VI, Edward IV, Henry VII, and most notably, Henry VIII. Experts date the burial to the late 1530s, a time marked by intense religious upheaval in England.
It was the era of the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Henry VIII declared himself head of the Church of England in 1534 and broke free from the Catholic Church. Over the next few years, he ordered the closure—and looting—of hundreds of Catholic monasteries and priories.
Milford-on-Sea, where the hoard was found, lay within the estate of Christchurch Priory, one such dissolved monastery. It’s quite likely that the people in the priory buried the treasure attempting to hide it from the kind and retrieve it at a later time. They never did.
“We do know that some churches did try to hide their wealth, hoping they would be able to keep it in the long term,” John Naylor, a coin expert at Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum, told The Guardian.
Back then, the coins were worth around £26—enough to buy a house in the countryside. “I doubt most people in England at the time ever saw a gold coin,” Guest said. Whoever buried them was protecting a fortune.
Others contain the initials of two of Henry’s wives, Catherine of Aragon and James Seymour. Credit: BNPS
Ironically, Henry VIII turned out to be one of Britain’s most impactful kings, although he was mostly concerned with himself and his personal life was as chaotic as his reign. Obsessed with securing a male heir, he married six times and changed the course of English religion to make it happen. This led to a sequence of events, many of them tragic, that shaped how Britain would develop for centuries.
In 1509, he wed Catherine of Aragon, daughter of Spanish royalty. When she failed to produce a son, he sought an annulment—and when the Pope refused, Henry broke from the Catholic Church entirely.
He then married Anne Boleyn, who gave birth to the future Queen Elizabeth I. He executed her for treason.
Just days later, he married Jane Seymour, who finally bore him a son, Edward VI, before dying shortly after childbirth.
He had six wives in total.
“Four kings, two queens and one cardinal are named on coins in the hoard,” Guest told Fox News Digital. The initials of Catherine and Jane, carved onto the coins, suggest somebody buried the in the thick of this royal drama.
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