Peter has recently
started a thread to show the Gun Money coins that we saw at the Airgead exhibition in Dublin the other day. In the thread he notes that when William had defeated James, instead of declaring James's tokens worthless, he allowed them to circulate at their intrinsic value.
This raises the question of how this was communicated to ordinary folk who spent or received them, and to what extent confusion and conflict arose as a result. James II's Gun Money is far from the only coinage to have had this kind of treatment. When Elizabeth I came to the throne she ordered base silver from Edward VI's reign to be countermarked and circulated for its intrinsic value (which was often a very awkward amount, such as twopence-farthing).
Today, authorities go to huge lengths to inform and educate the public before even swapping one coin for another of the same denomination (e.g. the UK £1), and even more when the units change relationship to each other (decimalisation in the UK and elsewhere) or a new currency is introduced overall (the euro). And this is in a context where virtually all coin users are numerate and literate, and where the coins have clear marks of value on them. Even so, we get reports when these kinds of change occur that people get confused.
I don't know what the intrinsic value of the Gun Money pieces was at the time of William's declaration. I know more about Elizabeth's countermarked coinage - here, shillings from Edward's second (very base) issue were countermarked with a portcullis and good for 4½d, and those from his third (extremely base) issue had a greyhound countermark and circulated for 2¼d. How were these revaluations communicated to the average Joe, who was illiterate and probably didn't go to some large city just to hear a proclamation?
And if that was a difficult situation, the situation with Gun Money is even worse. Here, there are no countermarks. The situation covers a number of different stated denominations, and some denominations come in large and small varieties containing more or less metal. The metal is of varying content. The general sociopolitical situation was much more tense and disorganised in Ireland in 1690 than in England in the first years of Elizabeth's reign. Many of the people who needed to know didn't speak the same language as the people telling them.
How on earth did anyone know anything other than what was written on the coins? There must have been no end of fraudulent practices and arguments/fights due to deliberate attempts to deceive or genuine ignorance.