ABSTRACT
In Restoration England John Evelyn, the diariest, considered that his country had seen the last of tradesmen’s tokens. Just then issues of copper halfpennies and farthings from the Royal Mint were driving them out of circulation. ‘The tokens’, he wrote,
which every tavern and tippling house (in the days of late anarchy and confusion among us) presumed to stamp and utter for immediate exchange, as they were passable through the neighbourhood, which, though seldom reaching further than the next street or two, may happily in after times come to exercise and busy the learned critic what they should signify and fill whole volumes with their conjectures.[ 1 ]
