Just wanted to share for all the members and enthusiasts, not my oldest piece of silver c1578-1601 . Half Groat or 3half pence. Found metal Detecting 
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Great find. Original weight about a gram of .925 silver. Did you make out the inscriptions: E.’ D.’ G.’ ROSA · SINE · SPINA · Meaning “Elizabeth by the Grace of God a rose without a thorn”?
On the observe appears a quartered shield of arms over cross fourchée within inner beaded circle. The legend around reads “CIVI TAS LON DON.” meaning City of London so it was made in the Royal Mint in the tower of London between 1582 and 1600. There were five royal mints altogether in various towns. NB the two marks behind her head. These are mint marks.
At one point Elizabeth was persuaded to bring in as her master of the mint a Frenchman who had invented a milling machine to make these coins tougher to clip. Elizabeth, whose mom was executed by a Frenchman with a Damascus steel broadsword, was leery of Frenchmen generally and had that one executed when Walsingham, her spymaster accused him of theft.
So this hand-hammered later coin is clipped as are nearly all examples extant.
Eventually the solution to stop clipping was to increase the mandatory assay value of plate silver from .925 or Sterling, along with the coins, to Britannia standard or 95.8333 % silver by weight. The silversmiths found the softer material difficult to work with when the Baroque then Rococo silver came into fashion and it was abandoned by the Goldsmiths Assay office in 1720.
Last week a 1562 Shilling milled by the later-executed mint master appeared at auction in a later baleen handle ladle. The coin was not clipped and without the ladle had a value of $4,500. It sold for C$100. So keep an eye out for ladles with coins that can be extracted.
Coin clipping is still an offence. Although now all coins are base metal there is little incentive to do it. Back in the early 1960’s when our (Canadian) coins were still silver, I used to haul buckets of them across the Detroit river to the Franklin Mint where the base metal value exceeded the face value. All went well until the coin weight knocked the bottom out of my rusting Datsun automobile in the middle of the international tunnel under the river!
Like Lucy Ricardo of I love Lucy TV, I had a lot of “splaining” to do.
CRWW
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Once again I thank you for your help in identification, I see I got the dates wrong both ends 
. I did have a book somewhere that used to help me identify them !!, but I think my brother has helped himself to it and forgotten to return it 
. I’ve always believed that any and all silver was put on this earth to be polished, but somehow I just can’t bring myself to buff these little up . Cheers once again
You are welcome. Yes coin collectors hate buffers so resist the temptation. Someone once did a study on why males are more prone to cleaning silver than females who loathe it. I think Freud was cited! Clean the accumulated dirt out of the cracks. Dish washing liquid soap and a soft old toothbrush works. Or a sheet of tin foil, warm water and washing soda. Resisting rubbing and never buff which physically moves the molecular structure of the surface.
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