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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;scottishmoney, post: 2635301, member: 12789&quot;]The upper crust of British society really could have cared less about &quot;little people&quot; and little money problems.&nbsp; This was a real issue from the mid 17th century on up to the mid 19th century.</p><p><br /></p><p>From the time of the English Civil War of the 1640s the crown more or less ignored small change.&nbsp; When it was issued it was done by &quot;patent&quot; or contract meaning that coin was often minted by private concerns that profited considerably from minting underweight copper and bronze coins. </p><p><br /></p><p>To alleviate the shortages of small change merchants, municipalities etc took on the tasks of creating their own small change in farthings, halfpence and penny coins - until the crown cracked down on such in 1672.&nbsp; Later in the 17th century the Tower mint in London did take on the task of minting farthings and halfpence, but rather sparingly.</p><p><br /></p><p>This was the situation that thence saw the rise of the counterfeits beginning in the 18th century and continuing unabated until the Napoleonic Wars in the early 19th century.&nbsp; Counterfeits were not created so much to shortchange the crown or fraudulent purposes as they were more to alleviate a serious shortage of small change that the crown seemingly ignored.</p><p><br /></p><p>The problem exasperated into larger denominations, ie threenubs, tanners and bobs and thence the crown took notice during the Napoleonic war era and started cranking out significant bronze starting in 1797 and silver starting in 1817 and the crown cracked down on counterfeits, evasion and privately issued tokens.</p><p><br /></p><p>The issue of money creation was one of the initial driving forces that lit some of the arising conflict betwixt the American colonists and Great Britain when the crown objected to the colonists issuing paper money because of the lack of a suitable coinage.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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