In the late 16th and early 17th centuries England was suffering a severe shortage of coinage, with the royal mint unable to procure enough silver and gold to strike coins. The Bank of England purchased a large number of Latin American "pieces of eight" and counterstamped them with a small portrait of King George the Third. These were issued between 1797 and 1804, when the Bank began restriking the whole face of the spanish "dollars". These countermarked coins gave rise to a limerick at the time "The Bank in order to make it's money pass, stamped the head of a fool on the neck of an ass."
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