Eggs for Money

[In the phrase] to take eggs for money, to accept a offer which one would rather refuse ... Farmers' daughters would go to market, taking with them a basket of eggs. If on bought something worth ... three shillings, fourpence, she would pay the three shillings and say - "will you take eggs for [the rest of the] money?" If the shopman weakly consented, he received the value of the fourpence in eggs, usually ... at the rate of four or five a penny. But the strong-minded shopman would refuse. Eggs were even used to pay interest for money.

- Walter Skeat's Glossary of Tudor and Stuart Words, 1914.

A proverbial expression, when a person was either awed by threats or overreached by subtlety, to give money upon a trifling or fictitious consideration.

- Robert Nares' Gloassary of the Works of English Authors, 1859.

Mine honest friend, will you take eggs for money?

- William Shakespear's Winter's Tale, 1611.