The Coin Act 1732 (6 Geo. II c. 26) was an Act of the

Parliament of Great Britain The Parliament of Great Britain was formed in May 1707 following the ratification of the Acts of Union by both the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland. The Acts ratified the treaty of Union which created a new unified Kingdo ...

which made it

high treason Treason is the crime of attacking a state authority to which one owes allegiance. This typically includes acts such as participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military, its diplo ...

counterfeit To counterfeit means to imitate something authentic, with the intent to steal, destroy, or replace the original, for use in illegal transactions, or otherwise to deceive individuals into believing that the fake is of equal or greater value tha ...

gold coins. Its title was "An Act to prevent the coining or counterfeiting any of the gold coins commonly called Broad Pieces." Broad Pieces were gold coins in denominations of 23 or 25

shilling The shilling is a historical coin, and the name of a unit of modern currencies formerly used in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, other British Commonwealth countries and Ireland, where they were generally equivalent to 12 pence o ...

s. A royal

proclamation A proclamation (Lat. ''proclamare'', to make public by announcement) is an official declaration issued by a person of authority to make certain announcements known. Proclamations are currently used within the governing framework of some nations ...

in February 1732 had prohibited people from giving or receiving in payment Broad Pieces, or halves or quarters of them, and had required revenue collectors to collect them in order that they could be melted down and made into new gold coins. To encourage people to surrender their coins, the revenue collectors were authorised to purchase them at favourable rates, which unintentionally created an incentive for people to counterfeit them. Accordingly, an Act of Parliament was passed which made it treason to counterfeit them, or to "utter or vend any of the said gold coins, knowing them to be so forged, coounterfeited or coined as aforesaid." There was a £40 reward for anyone whose information led to someone being convicted of treason under the Act, and any convicted traitor was to be automatically

pardon A pardon is a government decision to allow a person to be relieved of some or all of the legal consequences resulting from a criminal conviction. A pardon may be granted before or after conviction for the crime, depending on the laws of the ju ...

ed if he informed on somebody else and the person informed on was convicted. The Act required prosecutions for this kind of treason to begin within six months of the offence. The penalty was death, but there was to be no corruption of blood. The rules of evidence and procedure were to be the same as in other cases of counterfeiting coins.Section 5

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