Not to beat the dead horse into a new animal but its great 
to make sure the point is made. As Virgil says the Spanish 
money (made in prodigious quantities) served to help the 
developing Atlantic economies have some sort of mediuim of 
exchange other than goods(tobacco etc.) The shortage of 
money worsened in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth 
century which produced the overstruck spanish coins of the 
English Caribbean possessions and the wide variety of money 
used in eastern North America. The English even struck small 
images of george III on the Spanish 8 reale pieces, many of 
which were old and worn producing the memorable parliamentary
quip: "The Bank to make its Spanish dollar pass stamped the 
head of a fool on the head of an ass".

At our excavations at City Point,Virginia, small cut one 
half and one real "bits"(quartered and halved from two real 
coins) are encountered as a further demonstartion of 
this.Much of this continued in circulation for quite a long 
time.