104 CURRENCY OF GUERNSEY, ETC. 



It is not within the scope of this paper to discuss the whys 

 and the wherefores of these fluctuations in the values of the 

 various coins in use in Guernsey. We have seen and see 

 every day violent movements in the value of the franc, the 

 mark, the rouble, the crown, the lira, and the peseta, which 

 arise from very subtle and little understood causes, and no 

 doubt these causes contributed to the difference in the value 

 of the local coins from year to year, and it could not have 

 been a pleasing or easy task for the Jurats of those days to 

 have to adjudicate on the values of various foreign coins, 

 some of which they could not have been familiar with. 

 Applying this remark to the present day, it is difficult to 

 imagine the Royal Court fixing equitably and without injus- 

 tice to any interest, commercial or financial, the value of the 

 franc, mark, rouble or crown. 



Happily the Court is spared this responsibility, the 

 financial columns of the daily papers supplying the informa- 

 tion the Jurats of the 1 6th and 17th centuries were called on 

 to furnish. 



The rest of the 18th century was a quiet one for the cur- 

 rency of Guernsey, until the outbreak of the war with France, 

 the only entries of Ordinances being in respect of the Liard 

 or Double which in that century began to come into circula- 

 tion. The Liard or Double varied in value from 6 to 7 to 

 the sol tournois or about 3~2od. In later times, the Double 

 was of course reckoned first at 8 to the id. Guernsey, and on 

 the change over to English currency in 1921 at 8 to the 

 British penny. 



On the outbreak of the war with France in 1798, the French 

 coinage was the legal tender of the Island. It was obviously 

 most inconvenient that the current coin should be that of an 

 enemy, but the vogue had had too long an existence for it 

 to be lightly discarded and a change made. In 1707 Spanish 

 Dollars, valued at 4/9 sterling, were added to the current 

 coinage, but nothing, even the passing of an Ordinance in 

 1799 forbidding the export of specie, could prevent the dis- 

 appearance which seems to invariably take place on the out- 

 break of war of metal coinage, especially silver* 1 *. In the 

 French war of the end of the 18th century and the early 19th 

 the scarcity of coin owing to our isolated position was felt 

 seriously. The States of Jersey in 181 3 issued tokens in 

 silver of the value of 3/- and 1/6 to the extent of ^"10,000 

 worth, but to no avail, as the whole of it had disappeared in 

 two months* time. The transaction was not without its com- 

 pensations, as the 3/- piece only contained 1/9 worth of 



(1) We saw this ourselves in 1014. On the outbreak of the war with Germany, 

 suddenly all silver eoins disappeared, and this had to be met by the issue by the 

 States of paper notes of small values, even down to 5/- notes being used, 



