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COIN CLIPPING

A real medieval crime, committed by people of every background, that was turned into a lasting lie about Jews and money

 

First published: September 28, 2026

 

Last updated: October 3, 2026

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Coin clipping was a form of currency fraud found for centuries wherever coins were made of gold or silver. A clipper trimmed tiny slivers of metal from the edges of coins. He then spent the lighter coins at their full face value and kept the trimmed metal to sell.

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It was a real crime, and a common one. It damaged trust in money and pushed governments into costly reforms of the coinage. People of every background clipped coins. But in medieval England, clipping was recast as a "Jewish" crime. That false idea outlived the coins themselves.

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How Coin Clipping Worked

Coins in this era were worth the gold or silver they contained. Before coins were made by machine, they were struck by hand with hammers and dies. These "hammered" coins were less even than modern coins, so small losses at the edge were hard to see.

A typical clipper would:

  1. Shave or trim a thin sliver from the edge of a coin using shears, a knife, or a file.

  2. Spend the lighter coin at full value. It still looked mostly normal.

  3. Collect the clippings over time, melt them down, and sell the metal, or sometimes use it to make counterfeit coins.

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The amounts could be tiny. The historian W. Johnson notes that in the widespread clipping of 1279, the silver taken from each penny was smaller than the head of a pin. It could be detected only by weighing. Over time, though, clipped coins became noticeably light. People weighed coins, refused light ones, or held on to good ones. Trust in the currency suffered.

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Widespread Practice

Several factors made clipping both easy and tempting:

  • No protective edges: Hand-struck coins had plain, uneven edges. England experimented with machine-made coins under Elizabeth I. From 1561, Eloy Mestrell (sometimes spelled Mestrelle) ran a screw press at the mint in the Tower of London, but the experiment ended in 1572. Permanent machine coinage began in 1662 under Charles II, when the Frenchman Pierre Blondeau set up machinery that gave coins milled or lettered edges. Those edges made clipping easy to spot.

  • Profit motive: Tiny amounts taken from many coins added up.

  • Economic pressure: Inflation, war, and shortages of good coin created both pressure and opportunity.

  • Hard to detect: Punishments could be severe, including hanging. In late-17th-century England, clipping and counterfeiting counted as treason. But catching clippers was hard without weighing coins, and the people who handled the most money were usually the first to be suspected.

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Major Historical Examples

  • Late-17th-century England: Clipping reached crisis levels. By the early 1690s, so much of the old hammered silver was clipped or worn that the government feared there was not enough good coin for everyday trade. In January 1696, Parliament ordered the whole stock of hammered silver to be called in and reminted as new machine-made coins with milled edges. This Great Recoinage ran from 1696 to 1699.

  • Isaac Newton's role: Newton became Warden of the Mint in 1696, when the Great Recoinage was already under way. He became Master of the Mint at the end of 1699. He helped run the recoinage and spent years pursuing clippers and counterfeiters, whose crime counted as treason. Newton did not introduce milled coins. They had been in regular production since 1662.

  • Medieval France: Clipping was not unique to England. The English chronicler Matthew Paris reported that Louis IX of France punished clippers, both Jewish and Christian.

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The Antisemitic Connection

Jews first came to England after the Norman Conquest of 1066. In medieval Europe, Jews often faced limits on owning land and on working in many trades. In England, moneylending was one of the few occupations open to Jews, because Christians were not supposed to lend money at interest.

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Moneylending is part of the background, but it is not the cause of the stereotype. From around 1200, the Church officially barred Christians from lending at interest. Many Christians lent anyway. The historian Sara Lipton notes that throughout the Middle Ages, many more Christians than Jews lent at interest. The stereotype of the greedy Jew also existed centuries before Jewish moneylending, and it reached far beyond it. In Lipton's words, the Jewish moneylender was "the product, not the source," of the myth.

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Clipping was no different. Johnson concludes that Jews handled coins the same way their Christian neighbors did. When clipping was rare, it was rare among Jews too. When it was widespread, it was widespread among Christians and Jews alike.

Historical examples include:

  • 1278–79, England: Edward I's government was alarmed about the coinage and arrested Jews across England over coin offenses. The investigations had first focused mostly on Christians, but as Historic Royal Palaces puts it, "by 1278 the Jews had unjustly become the main targets." About 600 Jewish prisoners were held at the Tower of London, at a time when there were only around 3,000 Jews in all of England.

  • Unequal punishment: A royal account of the executioner's fees lists 269 Jews and 29 Christians hanged. Historic Royal Palaces summarizes it this way: "Almost 300 Jews were executed alongside fewer than 30 Christians." Yet Christians were convicted far more often. Johnson, citing the historian Zefira RokĂ©ah, gives an estimate of 481 Jews and 1,110 Christians convicted of currency offenses. More than twice as many Christians were convicted, but roughly nine times as many Jews were hanged.

  • 1290, England: Edward I expelled all Jews from England. Historic Royal Palaces calls it the "first example of a nationwide exile of Jews from a European kingdom," and later rulers elsewhere followed it. Historic Royal Palaces points to pressure from Parliament, the Church, and the nobility, within a wider culture of anti-Jewish prejudice.

  • Late 14th century, English literature: The "coin-clipping Jew" lived on as a stock literary figure long after the expulsion. In the poem Piers Plowman, written about 90 years after 1290, the character Covetousness boasts that he learned from "Lombards and Jews" how to weigh pennies and clip the heaviest ones. Johnson notes that English people believed this picture even though they spent their whole lives without meeting a Jew.

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Clipping was a real, widespread crime, committed by Christians and Jews alike. The antisemitic part was the idea that it was a Jewish crime, and the far harsher punishment of Jews for it. The "Jewish coin-clipper" then became part of a broader set of antisemitic tropes that paint Jews as dishonest with money and a threat to the economy.

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Link to Modern Conspiracy Theories

Coin clipping ended centuries ago, once coins had milled edges and were made to a standard. But the trope of Jews as secret manipulators of money has never gone away. Modern conspiracy theories recycle the same accusations under new names:

  • "Jewish bankers control the world": The Rothschilds are a Jewish banking family whose business dates back to the 18th century. They have long been accused of secretly controlling the economy and profiting from wars. A 19th-century pamphlet falsely claimed that Nathan Rothschild made a fortune from early news of the Battle of Waterloo. The story was untrue, but it was reprinted and translated for generations. The family, and Jews by extension, were blamed for economic crises and wars for the next two centuries. These claims echo the medieval charge that Jews secretly damaged the currency for their own gain.

  • Federal Reserve conspiracies: These are claims that "the Jews" run the U.S. Federal Reserve and so control the world's money. The ADL calls this a classic antisemitic myth. In fact, the Federal Reserve is run by a Board of Governors whose members are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The myth recycles the same old picture of Jews secretly manipulating money.

  • The "Great Reset": Since 2020, this conspiracy theory has claimed that "global elites" are using the COVID-19 pandemic to remake the world economy for their own benefit. The ADL documents believers who go further, accusing Jews of orchestrating the plot or invoking the Rothschild family. It is the old image of a hidden Jewish hand behind the world's money, attached to a new crisis.

  • Great Replacement: This conspiracy theory claims that white populations are being deliberately "replaced" by non-white immigrants. Many of its promoters blame Jews for that immigration, which turns the theory into a claim about Jewish "control" of immigration and society. It is not about money, but it follows the same pattern: a hidden Jewish hand behind changes that people fear.

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These modern versions ignore the fact that financial crimes and economic crises have always involved people of all backgrounds, not any one religious or ethnic group. The long life of the coin-clipping trope shows how old antisemitic myths adapt to new settings.

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Coin clipping was a real crime, committed by people of every background, and then pinned on Jews. Understanding that history helps us recognize and reject the same kind of scapegoating today.

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Sources

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