“Taxes in the largely agricultural economy of the Middle Ages were usually paid in the form of goods, and these payments were recorded with notches on wooden ‘tally’ sticks that were then split length-wise. One half remained with the tax payer serf, as proof of payment (an ingenious way to avoid counterfeiting). It didn’t take long for the King and his treasurer to realize that they could actually issue tally sticks in advance, in order to finance ‘emergency spending’. The half of the tally stick which originally remained with the treasury had a handle and was called the ‘stock’ - the term that has evolved to describe shares in publicly listed corporations today