136 CURRENCY. 



teenth century clipping 1 and highway robbery were the com- 

 monest offences against property, as perjury had been a few 

 years before. Later on, forgery became a fashionable crime, 

 and men preferred it to safer kinds of fraud, though the law 

 was remorseless to the detected culprit. Much of the coin 

 was no doubt worn with age, for in Justice's work on Money 

 and the Exchanges he gives the names, and with them the 

 betterness or worseness of forty-one gold coins and 109 silver 

 coins still circulating, or at least accepted at the banks and 

 exchanges of his time (1707), some of them, as I have said, 

 being actually the base moneys of Henry VIII and Edward 

 VI. Now an ancient and worn currency, especially if it be 

 of finer metal than that of later issues, naturally tempts the 

 clipper, and when the coin had been clipped or filed, each 

 successive recipient might think it no great harm if he ab- 

 stracted a few grains. Besides, the irregular, hammered coin 

 which was in circulation, especially when the piece was thin 

 and the ring well within the edge, might suggest the fraud, 

 and even seem to give an excuse for it. 



I have described the circumstances which attended the re- 

 coinage in a work to which I have already referred. But I 

 cannot omit to note how important was the resolution which 

 the legislature came to, at the instance of Montague and 

 Sommers, and under the advice of Locke, to restore the cur- 

 rency in its full weight as well as fineness to the standard of 

 Elizabeth. It was an arduous and difficult task, and it may 

 be doubted whether Parliament or the public would not have 

 shrunk from the sacrifice had they known what the charge 

 would have been. When the recoinage was completed in 1699 

 the money issued by the Mint was about seven millions sterling, 

 and the loss to the community was ^"2,703,164 $s. ioj< 



1 Clipping the coin had been made high treason by Cromwell's Treason Act of 

 1654. 



