Plack (coin)

No half-placks were minted under James V.[4] Placks and other copper-based coins were widely counterfeited, and in May 1567 the Privy Council of Mary, Queen of Scots, prohibited the circulation of forgeries under the pain of treason.

[6] In March 1574, Regent Morton issued a proclamation to "cry down" or devalue unofficial placks and lions or hardheads (two pence pieces) made in the time of Mary of Guise.

[10] A chronicle writer compared the motifs of the countermark, the "mark of a heart" with heraldry carved on Morton's Gate, the Portcullis Gate of Edinburgh Castle, and said that the labourers who worked on the reconstruction of the castle after the Marian Civil War had been paid with base money.

[11] In 1588 the word plack was also used to describe coins of the value of a penny or two pence, the "tuppences" having two dots placed next to the lion of Scotland.

[15] A letter written by Robert Constable in 1569 described how English and Scottish rebels drank ale played cards for "placks and hardheads" at the house of Thomas Kerr of Ferniehirst in Jedburgh.