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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Saor Alba, post: 760786, member: 21607&quot;]Oh yes, there was a significant shortage of coins in all of Britain.&nbsp; A good read that focuses on Scotland, but rather encompasses the general situation in all of Britain is Nicholas Holmes &quot;History of Small Change in Scotland&quot;.</p><p><br /></p><p>During the period from the late 17th through early 19th century the British government more or less ignored small change other than legislating the outlawing of private token issues in 1674 which effectively ended the 17th century token issues.&nbsp; But the Royal Mint did very little to replace the tokens with coins of the realm.</p><p><br /></p><p>The problem was dire enough that it was economical to counterfeit coins down to a farthing and indeed counterfeits from the 18th century are quite common.&nbsp; In addition coins that should have been long since obsolescent continued to circulate almost 100 years after they were first minted, in this case for the Scottish bawbees or sixpences which continued to circulate in Scotland long after the Union in 1707 unified the coinages and again the smallest denominations were ignored.&nbsp; The bawbees continued to circulate as halfpennies right into the 1770s by which time they were significantly worn and underweight and dropped out of sight.</p><p><br /></p><p>The Royal Mint practically did nothing until 1797 with the massive coinage of pennies and twopences that year, then following in 1799 with farthings and halfpence, and 1806 with farthing through the pennies again.&nbsp; Those coins again saw a long circulation and were a significant percentage of the coins surveyed in 1841 in Yorkshire.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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