Halfpenny - Yorkshire Pocklington / B. Buttrey

Pocklington is a market town in the East Riding, and Buttrey's halfpenny belongs to the wave of privately issued farthing and halfpenny tokens that flooded England after the Crown's repeated failure to provide adequate small change. Parliament had authorized royal copper coinage as early as 1643, but production was so irregular and insufficient that tradespeople across provincial England simply made their own. By 1666, thousands of issuers — mercers, innkeepers, chandlers — had done exactly that. Buttrey's identity beyond the token itself remains obscure, which is itself typical of the record for minor East Riding traders of the period.

The series was suppressed the following year when Charles II finally issued a regal copper halfpenny in 1672.