CROCKARD

The crockard was a foreign coin which appeared in England during Edward I's reign, the result of a shortage of coin in the country. He instituted a reform of the coinage in 1279-80, intending to fund his Welsh campaigns. However, it was too successful: good English coins left the country, although prohibited, for use in Europe. The shortage remained, even when European rulers and princes produced their own imitations of the English coins. These latter were usually lighter and less valuable than the English and were known as 'crockards', flooding in during the 1290s. There was an attempt to demonetise these coins in 1300 but fluctuations in the supply of coin in the first decades of the 14c caused grave problems. -

Cf. Pollard