Definition
De falso moneta (Latin: "of false money") is the title of an English statute enacted under Edward I — specifically the statute 27 Edw. I — that imposed capital punishment and total forfeiture of goods upon persons found importing certain debased or counterfeit foreign coins into England. The statute targeted two particular coins known as pollards and crokards, foreign imitations of English pennies that were circulating alongside legitimate currency and undermining the integrity of the monetary system. The penalty was absolute: conviction meant forfeiture of life, goods, and everything a person was capable of forfeiting.
The term functions in legal writing primarily as a citation label — a shorthand reference to this specific medieval statute — rather than as a general legal concept describing currency crimes.
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Why It Matters in Research
De falso moneta is a narrow but instructive term for researchers working in English legal history, particularly in the history of monetary regulation, treason law, and the evolution of counterfeiting offenses.
Several research traps are worth noting.
First, the historical dictionaries are not fully consistent on the names of the coins targeted. Burrill gives "pollards and crokards." Black's 2nd Edition gives "nollards and crokards" — almost certainly a transcription or typesetting error for "pollards," since "nollards" appears nowhere in the broader literature on medieval English coinage. Researchers relying on Black's 2nd Edition alone may find the coin names confusing or unsearchable. Reeves' History of English Law (the cited secondary source) is the more reliable reference for coin nomenclature.
Second, currency crimes in medieval England sat at the intersection of property, treason, and royal prerogative. The severity of the De falso moneta statute — death plus total forfeiture — reflects the monarchical treatment of coinage as a sovereign function, not merely a commercial fraud. Researchers tracing the doctrinal lineage of counterfeiting as a species of treason should treat this statute as an early data point in that evolution, preceding the more systematic treatment of coinage offenses under later Tudor and Stuart legislation.
Third, the term may appear in older English legal treatises and Year Books as a case or statute reference. Its appearance in a text does not signal a general doctrine of false money law — it is almost always a specific reference back to this single Edwardian enactment.
Researchers in the Law Mind corpus will also want to be attentive to the distinction between importing debased foreign coins (the offense targeted here) and domestic counterfeiting or coin-clipping, which were treated under different legal frameworks and carried distinct doctrinal histories.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The three source dictionaries are in broad agreement on the substance: all identify De falso moneta as the title of the statute 27 Edw. I and all agree on the severity of the penalty. The entries are brief and primarily descriptive, reflecting that the term functions as a statutory title rather than a doctrinal concept requiring extended analysis.
The key divergence is in coin nomenclature. Burrill renders the targeted coins as "pollards, and crokards," which aligns with standard numismatic and legal history scholarship on late thirteenth-century English currency. Black's 1st Edition is partially illegible at the critical word, rendering it ambiguously. Black's 2nd Edition gives "nollards and crokards," which appears to be a corruption of "pollards." Neither edition of Black's provides any additional analytical commentary beyond the statutory description.
All three dictionaries cite 2 Reeve, English Law (variously spelled) as the secondary authority. This is a reference to John Reeves, History of the English Law, a work of eighteenth-century legal history that remains a standard reference for tracing medieval statutory development. Researchers who want more than the bare statutory description should go directly to Reeves rather than relying on the dictionary entries as self-contained sources.
None of the historical dictionaries situate De falso moneta within the broader arc of English monetary legislation or discuss its relationship to later coinage statutes. The entries treat it as an isolated title entry, not as part of a doctrinal family.
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Jurisdictional Note
De falso moneta is exclusively English in origin and has no direct counterpart in American or other common law jurisdictions. It is relevant only in the context of English legal history and early common law development. Modern counterfeiting law in the United States derives from separate constitutional and statutory foundations.
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