It appears to have been in connection with the former victory that Edward coined his famous gold noble, in which the obverse bears the effigy of the king, crowned, standing in a ship with a sword in one hand and a shield in the other, while the reverse bears the legend from St Luke, _Jesus autem transiens per medium eorum ibat_, “but Jesus, passing through the midst of them, went his way,” which Nicolas thinks was meant to indicate the action of the king in passing through the French fleet at the battle of Sluys. The impress on the obverse has been usually regarded as symbolic of Edward’s power and sovereignty on the sea. The unknown author of _The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye_, written some ninety years later, makes frequent reference to Edward’s noble,-- “Ffor iiii thynges our noble sheueth to me, Kyng, shype, and swerde, and pouer of the see,”[49]-- and it is always mentioned by the English writers on the sovereignty of the sea as evidence that Edward exercised that sovereignty. A recent author[50] doubts whether there was any connection between Edward’s noble and the battle of Sluys or the claim to the sovereignty of the sea; but at all events in the next century, in the reign of Henry VI., when the naval power of England had again sunk to a low point, the noble was made an object of jest and derision among foreigners, especially the Flemish and French. They told the English to take away the ship from their noble and put a sheep on it instead--an allusion, no doubt, to the growth of sheep-farming in England.[51]