½ Crown – England

In 1696, England was in the midst of a severe monetary crisis, primarily driven by the poor state of its silver coinage. For decades, coins had been clipped and filed by the public, reducing their silver content and intrinsic value below their face value. This led to Gresham’s Law in action: "bad money drives out good," as people hoarded full-weight coins and used only the degraded ones for trade. The situation crippled commerce, undermined government finances, and created widespread economic uncertainty, as the very medium of exchange was neither trusted nor uniform.

The government, under King William III and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Charles Montagu, responded with a radical solution: the Great Recoinage of 1696. This was an immense logistical undertaking, masterminded by the scientist Isaac Newton, who would later become Warden of the Royal Mint. The plan was to recall all the old, damaged silver coins and replace them with new, milled-edge coins that were difficult to clip. The process was financed by a controversial new window tax and a loan from the newly founded Bank of England, established just two years prior in 1694.

The recoinage itself proved deeply disruptive in the short term. The Mint could not produce the new coins fast enough, creating a severe shortage of currency that contracted the economy and caused hardship. However, by successfully restoring a sound and trustworthy silver currency, it laid a critical foundation for financial stability. The crisis also had a lasting unintended consequence: it accelerated the shift toward gold as the de facto standard. With silver scarce, the gold guinea, whose value was fixed by the recoinage, became increasingly dominant in large transactions, setting England on a path that would ultimately lead to the formal Gold Standard in the next century.