Riga Schilling

Two coins found at Jamestown were manufactured in what is now Latvia. Both were recovered from features that were filled with trash around 1610, and both coins are dated to the 1570s, making them among the earliest dated coins recovered at Jamestown.

Today the largest city in Latvia, Riga was founded in 1201. The city was part of the vast Holy Roman Empire when the coins were minted. However, it remained a “Free Imperial City,” a status that granted more autonomy than many other cities in the Empire. We may never know in whose pocket this coin came to Jamestown, but Riga was a city that some Englishmen may have been familiar with. It is mentioned by Richard Hakluyt in his book, The Principal Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques and Discoueries of the English Nation, first published in 1589. Hakluyt himself never traveled to Virginia, but as a supporter of Walter Raleigh he presented a report (Discourse of Western Planting, 1584) to Queen Elizabeth I to convince her of the potential benefit to England of colonization in Virginia and he was a significant promoter of a 1606 petition to James I to grant the Virginia Company it’s charter.

Riga schillings were made using a newly invented production method called Walzwerk, or “rolling press.” In this process, two large iron cylinders simultaneously impressed the coin’s obverse and reverse designs onto a flat metal strip. The strip was then fed through a punch press, which stamped out each impressed area, resulting in individual coins. This sped up the minting process because many coins could be made at once, unlike hammered coins, which were made individually.

The coins are identified by their iconography and surrounding lettering, known as legends. The obverse bears two towers connected by a roof above a gate with the head of a lion in the center.  The surrounding legend reads CIVITATIS RIGENSIS, or City of Riga. The reverse depicts two crossed keys below a small flower and above a small cross, with the last two digits of the date positioned on either side of the keys. On one of the Jamestown coins, only one digit, a “7,” is visible, but the other coin includes both digits, “77,” indicating the date “1577.” The surrounding legend is an abbreviated version of Moneta Nova Argentea, or “new silver coin.” These coins are likely made of a silver-copper alloy called billon, although analysis has not yet been conducted to confirm this.

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