-30 THE TOKENS OF CORNWALL. 



more nearly worth what they were represented to be. Thus the 

 first local copper coin of this series issued, the Anglesea penny in 

 1787, weighed an ounce. For about 10 years coins of this class 

 continued to be struck in large quantities ; but the issue of the 

 massive penny and two-penny copper pieces of 1797 for the while 

 checked the operations of private issuers. In 1811, however, 

 there was again a scarcity of small change, and again private copper 

 tokens were issued, in such large numbers that in 1817 an Act of 

 Parliament was passed to prohibit their coinage and circulation. 

 In 1811 and 1812 there were also issued silver tokens; and these 

 were all ordered to be withdrawn from circulation in 1813. Since 

 1818 the traders of England have depended entirely upon the 

 Royal Mint for their metallic coinage. It cannot be said that 

 tokens have altogether disappeared whilst bank notes and bills of 

 exchange are still required to supplement our currency, and to 

 carry on the ramifications of a commerce based upon mutual 

 credit. But bank notes are issued under the direct sanction of 

 the law, and bills of exchange and their kin are personal contracts 

 by law enforceable; and the most legitimate successor of the 

 tokens of old now are the metallic cheques occasionally used by 

 co-operative societies in apportioning profits among their members. 



Such briefly is a history of the conditions under which the 

 coins of which this paper treats were issued. 



The great authority on the 17th century tokens is a work issued 

 in 1858 by Mr. Boyne, F.S.A., to which I shall have to make 

 frequent reference. It contains descriptions of 9,466 varieties; 

 but Mr. Boyne calculates the total to have been nearly 20,000, 

 and seeing how many have come to light since his work was 

 published, there is very little doubt that this is correct. For 

 example, he assigns to Devon 231 tokens. My friend Mr. H. S. 

 Gill, of Tiverton, (to whose ever ready help I am greatly indebted) 

 has succeeded in cataloguing about 330. To Cornwall Mr. Boyne 

 assigns 41. That number I have been enabled to raise to 90, 

 with 8 that may possibly be added — an increase in the one case 

 of 49 and in the other of 57. Twenty-eight of the additional 

 ones are to be found in other parts of Boyne's list, but — certainly 

 in most cases — wrongly assigned. Nearly the whole of the 

 remainder — 29 — are here published for the first time. For most 

 of these I am indebted to the courtesy of Mr. H. S. Gill ; Mr. 0. 



