Farthing - Buckinghamshire Aylesbury / E. Cope

Aylesbury's seventeenth-century token issues emerged from a practical crisis: Parliament's failure to provide sufficient small denomination coinage left tradespeople across England minting their own copper pieces to make change. E. Cope was among the Aylesbury issuers who stepped into that void, operating under the informal municipal tolerance that characterized the token period before the Crown suppressed private issues entirely in 1672, when Charles II finally introduced a royal farthing copper series to replace them.