A tally stick was split in two. The stock went to the one who paid in; the foil stayed with the one who received it. Both halves together made the record.
The Money Wars keeps the stock. Stock and Foil is the other half: regular essays on British political economy — how the state’s ledgers are kept, whom they serve, and what the record actually shows.
Free to read. New essays arrive by email.
Latest essays
- What Stock and Foil is, how it works, and when it arrives.
- For six centuries the state’s accounts were checked by fitting two halves of a stick together. In 1834 it burned them.