The Queen's Beasts: The White Lion of Mortimer - 2021 Proof Fine Silver with Goldclad® £2 Coin - BIOT

Anne de Mortimer was a medieval English noblewoman who became an ancestress to the royal House of York, one of the parties in the fifteenth-century dynastic Wars of the Roses. It was her line of descent that gave the Yorkist dynasty its first claim to the throne and therefore passing along the heraldic beast known as The White Lion of Mortimer. The Queen’s Beasts are ten heraldic statues representing the genealogy of Queen Elizabeth II which are depicted as the Royal supporters of England with each one consisting of a heraldic beast supporting a shield bearing the badge or arms of a family associated with the ancestry of Queen Elizabeth II. The original statues were commissioned to stand at an entrance of Westminster Abbey for Her Majesty’s Coronation in 1953. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II celebrated her 95th Birthday in 2021 and we, therefore, felt that a series of coins featuring the Queen’s Beasts would be a perfect tribute to celebrate this event, a milestone that no other Monarch has reached. The obverse of the coin features the Pobjoy Mint exclusive effigy of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.