Behind any military operation is finance to fund the activity. Soldiers would require pay, arms and equipment would need to be bought, food would also require to be purchased as would other stores and provisions. Much of these supplies would have required payment in hard currency. Although promissory notes were common place. For instance is Devon some civilians were forced to supply both the king and parliament, both sides presenting notes promising to pay when they had won the war!

Hard currency would have been made by minting gold and silver plate into coins. This would have involved the work of a coiner. The plate would be weighed, and if required the gold or silver would be refined, then it would be cut down to the correct size and weight for the individual coins, before being shaped into coin blanks. The blanks would then be placed between the dies before being struck to create the coin.

Within besieged garrison towns coinage would become in particularly short supply. In these situations siege tokens were often created to create cash flow, for the payment of troops and provisions.