The Yale of Beaufort on the Largest Silver Coin in the Collection

At Her Majesty The Queen’s coronation in 1953, ten ancestral beasts of heraldry, myth and legend guarded the entrance to Westminster Abbey. These beasts are symbols of royal authority and the ancestry which defines them, tracing royal bloodlines from medieval times to the present day.

The sixth coin in The Queen’s Beasts Collection features the Yale of Beaufort. 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 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.