Tokens, or Pledges of Value, as they were sometimes called, appeared early in the fifteenth century, and Queen Elizabeth permitted municipal tokens to be struck by the cities of Bristol, Oxford, and Wor- cester. Erasmus mentions the plumbei Angliae, evidently referring to the leaden tokens issued in the time of Henry VII.

There were three periods in English his tory when a large number of tokens were put into circulation, owing to the inadequacy of the regal coinage. The first of these was from about 1601 until prohibited by a royal proclamation dated August 16, 1672, when a regal issue of copper half Pennies and Farthings was made. From 1787 to 1802 the copper coinage was again insufficient and a large quantity of tokens appeared. This series were originally described and numbered by the Rev. James Condor, and collectors consequently refer to them as the Condor Tokens. In 1811 a third and last series of English tokens appeared, and those continued until 1817 when an Act was passed which prohibited their manufacture and use, and persons who had issued any were obliged to redeem them by the end of the year.

Among the earliest tokens issued in the United States are those struck in 1789 by Mott, an importer and dealer in silver- ware in New York City, and the ones dated 1794, of the firm of Talbot, Allum & Lee of the same place. The latter are some- times muled with English half Penny tokens of the same period.

See also Copperheads, Hard Times Tokens, and Communion Tokens.