Halfpenny - Surrey Bagshot / W. Moore

William Moore operated in Bagshot, a small coaching stop on the road between London and the southwest, and issued this token during the period when the Crown had entirely failed to provide small-denomination coinage adequate for everyday retail trade. The rash of private copper tokens flooding England in the 1650s–1670s was a direct consequence of that failure — merchants, innkeepers, and tradesmen essentially minted their own currency out of necessity. Parliament finally suppressed the practice with the Coinage Act of 1672, which established a royal copper coinage and rendered tokens like this one obsolete almost immediately.