8 SENIORAGE ON COINS CHAP. XV. 



ceding period in which gold money had been 

 coined in England, there was a reluctance to take 

 it among the internal traders. This arose from 

 the practice of the monarch to take a seniorage on 

 that coin as well as on the silver. The amount 

 of this was well known to the Lombards and 

 goldsmiths ; and as the foreign gold coin, among 

 that class, passed from hand to hand at a value 

 fixed by the weight of the pure gold it contained, 

 and the English gold passed at the legal value, 

 which was increased by the seniorage, it was the 

 interest of those two descriptions of traders to 

 secure what rested in their own hands in foreign 

 rather than in English gold. It would be more 

 useful to the Lombards in their foreign negotiations, 

 and to the goldsmiths in the manufacturing branch 

 of their trade. 



We may in this way account for the very small 

 amount of gold coinage in England between the 

 year when it commenced and the reign of Henry 

 VII. ; it being at scarcely the rate of three 

 thousand pounds yearly. This seniorage, how- 

 ever, prevented the application of the domestic 

 coined gold to any other purpose than that of 

 money, which probably was-one of the inducements 

 which had caused the practice. 



Ruding has exercised his accustomed laborious 

 diligence on this as on every subject relating to 

 the coins of this kingdom, but with so little suc- 

 cess, that he honestly confesses " that no very 



