In 1675 a new book about the coinage appeared on the shelves of the London bookshops. In it a lawyer, Rice Vaughan, meditated upon the reasons why precious metals were so well suited to the manufacture of coins, enthusing that gold and silver were rare, useful, malleable and 'of an exceeding long indurance against the Injuries of time or accident'. One day in the same year, 300 miles away in the West Riding of Yorkshire, Anthony Tasker set off on a drinking spree, in his pocket a handful of counterfeit shillings purchased from a local coiner. Tasker visited two alehouses where he successfully exchanged his counterfeits for ale, but the offence did not pass unnoticed, and he was soon apprehended and sent before a magistrate. What Rice Vaughan did not appear to realize was that the coinage in early modern England was threatened by neither time nor accident, but rather the desire of men and women to multiply an otherwise finite, and often inadequate, amount of income. As a result, the need to protect the coinage, and to keep bullion circulating within the shores of the nation, was a serious and perennial problem for the authorities. This chapter will examine, first, the law against coining and its shortcomings, and, second, the mentalities of the people from whose ranks England's many counterfeiters, clippers, filers, edgers, platers and utterers were drawn.