So scarce was money—_i.e._, bullion—that a means had to be found to supplement the currency; and it so happened that a large quantity of Spanish dollars were opportunely taken in prizes. In 1803 the idea of utilizing these as current English coins was first mooted, and some were stamped with the King’s head, the size of the ordinary goldsmith’s mark; but in 1804 a much larger issue of them was made, and they were stamped with a profile likeness of the King, in an octagon of about a quarter of an inch square. They were made to pass for five shillings each, which was about threepence-halfpenny over their value as bullion; and this extra, and fictitious, value was imposed upon them in order that they should not be melted down. They were also to be taken back for a time at that price, and on the 12th of January, 1804, every banking house received £1,000 worth of them from the Bank of England, against the Bank’s paper. But, as currency, they did not last long, the Bank refusing, as early as April the same year, to receive them back again, on “various frivolous and ill-founded pretensions.” For some reason, probably forgery, they were recalled, and on the 22nd of May there was a notice in the _Gazette_ to the effect that a new issue of them would be made, which would be stamped by the famous firm of Boulton, Soho Mint, at Birmingham, whose series of tradesmen’s tokens of George the Third’s reign is familiar to every numismatist. They varied from those stamped at the Tower, by having on the obverse, “Georgius III., Dei Gratiâ Rex,” and on the reverse, the figure of Britannia, with the words—“Five shillings dollar, Bank of England, 1804,” but even these were soon forged.