SPANISH EXPERIMENTS IN COINAGE. 



579 



hlancas, rendering them scarce at home. Thus far there had been 

 no serious tampering with the currency, but not long after this, 

 in 15G6, the necessities of Philip II led him to seek relief in de- 

 basing the minor coinage. lb is true that he was the richest 

 monarch in the civilized world ; that, besides his revenues from 

 his European dominions, the crown claimed twenty per cent of all 

 the precious metals mined in the Indies and ten percent seignior- 

 age for minting the rest ; but the Venetian envoy Paolo Tiepolo 

 tells us in 15G5 that his expenditure for interest alone was 

 5,050,000 ducats per annum, which, when capitalized at eight per 

 cent, amounted to 63,000,000 ducats of indebtedness a sum in- 

 credible even to the Italian financiers of the period. He had 

 little scruple as to the means of alleviating the burden. In 1559 

 he had experimented with methods suggested to him of issu- 

 ing money falsified with a certain powder combined with quick- 

 silver, which when rubbed over copper gave it the semblance of 

 silver, and was proof, as we are told, against the touchstone and 

 the hammer, but not against fire. One inventor of this promising 

 scheme, named Tiberio della Rocca, lost Philip's favor through 

 a quarrel with the royal confessor ; another one, a German named 

 Peter Sternberg, was more fortunate, and secured payments 

 amounting to 2,000 ducats for his discovery ; but, although every 

 effort was made to keep the matter secret, the Cortes got wind 

 of it, and their remonstrances forced the abandonment of the 

 scheme. 



Compared with this wholesale fraud, an enlargement of the 

 token coinage of base metal might well seem harmless, and it is 

 a striking proof of the dangers attendant on any vitiation of the 

 currency that consequences so deplorable and so lasting should 

 have sprung from a source apparently so trivial. In 1566 Philip 

 ordered the coinage of a new alloy, to be known as moneda de 

 vellon rica, with a larger proportion of silver 98 grains to the 

 marc of copper, or about ^\. The coins were all small : quartillos, 

 80 to the marc, to be current for a quarter of a ryal (about three 

 cents) ; quartos, 170 to the marc, worth four maravedis (about a 

 cent and a half) ; and medios quartos, 340 to the marc, worth two 

 maravedis. At the same time the old blancas, two to the mara- 

 vedi, were retained, but the silver alloy was reduced to four 

 grains in the marc ; and the number to be worked from the marc 

 was increased to 240, augmenting the profit on every marc by a 

 ryal and a quarter. What amount of this new vellon coinage 

 was poured forth from the mint we have no means of ascertain- 

 ing, but there can be little doubt that it was as great as the rude 

 mechanical facilities of the age were capable of producing, for 

 Philip's necessities were ever growing, what with the construc- 

 tion of the Escurial, the x>erpetual drain of the Flemish revolt, 



