THE COINAGES OF WILLIAM WOOD
One of the most interesting coinages for Colonial America came in the 1720s, when William Wood obtained permission from the king to strike coins in England for shipment to America. The story is a tangled one of a royal mistress, murder, bribery, and coins that were ridiculed by one of the most famous English writers. Coins were a rare commodity in the early American colonies, primarily because the London government made little effort to supply the colonists with ready money. In all fairness to the British, however, coined money was seldom plentiful in Britain either. The Americans began using paper money as early as the 1690s in an effort to provide some form of currency to the public but, like most such attempts, the issues had a tendency to depreciate rather…