A 16th-century gold portrait medal of Queen Mary I was sold for a record £276,000, according to an auctioneer.

London-based Morton & Eden said the lot became the "most expensive historical medal" to go under the hammer.

The sale price topped the previous high of £243,200 set by the same medal when it was last auctioned in 2005, a spokesman for the auctioneer said.

The medal was made in 1554 - the year of Mary's marriage to the future Philip II of Spain - and was once owned by the late Baroness Rothschild, a member of the Rothschild banking family.

New York dealer and collector Lawrence R. Stack was in the sale room to see his collection of Renaissance medals fetch a total of £1.8 million.

Queen Mary I earned the nickname "Bloody Mary" after ordering hundreds of religious dissenters to be burned at the stake.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.