58 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 



milled. Clipping coin thus became an easy and profitable fraud. 

 In Elizabeth's time this was high treason, and subjected clippers t o 

 the penalties for that offence. In consequence of this mutilation, a 

 great improvement was suggested in Charles Ilnd's reign, and a mill 

 which to a great extent superseded handwork, was set up in the 

 Tower of London, and was worked by horse-power. Pieces turned 

 out by it were not easily counterfeited. They were perfectly circular, 

 and their edges were inscribed with a legend. But the hammered 

 coins were not withdrawn, as the financiers ot that day expected the 

 new coinage would soon displace the old. But the reverse was the 

 result, for when it was found out that a clipped coin went as far in 

 the payment of debts as a milled edged one, the latter found their 

 way into the crucible, or abroad. The wiseacres of the government 

 of that day marvelled that people should be so perverse as to use 

 light money in preference to that of full weight, and as each lot of 

 new coinage appeared it as quickly disappeared. A writer of that 

 day mentions the case of a merchant, who in a sum of ;^35 received 

 only one-half crown in milled or new coinage. In 1695, five millions 

 in nominal value of the coinages of Elizabeth, James I. and Charles 

 I., were in circulation, with half a million of the new issue, and 

 two-thirds ©f the whole was clipped. Coiners multiplied, and the 

 extreme penalty of the law was continually enforced, the punishment 

 then being death. At this juncture, when trade was all but 

 paralyzed, Parliament took up the coinage question, and the debate 

 lasted for several days. The result was as follows : The money of 

 the kingdom was to be recoined according to the old standard of 

 weight and finance ; all new pieces were to be milled ; the lo*g in 

 the clipped pieces was to be borne by the public; that a time should 

 be fixed after which no clipped money should pass except in pay- 

 ments to the government, and a later time was fixed after which no 

 clipped money was to be passed at all. The loss was to be met by 

 the imposition of a tax upon windows, which continued to be levied 

 long after the immediate occasion had passed away. Until milled 

 silver come into circulation a guinea passed for thirty shillings. 

 When the former became plentiful, it fell to 21, 6, and finally to 

 2 1 shillings, which it ever after retained. 



Pepys, in his diary in 1664, says : " The old law of prohibiting 

 bullion to be exported, was a folly and injury, rather than good, 

 for if the exportations exceeded the importations, then the value 



