2 Pence Staffordshire - Rushbury and Woolley

Rushbury & Woolley operated as japanners and ironmongers in Bilston, a town in the Black Country whose metalworking trades generated a chronic shortage of small change in the early nineteenth century. The 1811 provincial copper tokens were a direct response to that shortage — the Coinage Act of 1816 and the subsequent Royal Mint copper recoinage of 1817 rendered them officially obsolete almost immediately after issue, making circulation life exceptionally brief.

Davis 30 is among the heavier two-penny tokens of the Staffordshire series, a weight reflecting the issuer's intent to peg value credibly against bullion at a moment when public trust in privately struck money was already eroding.