132 PARLIAMENTARY COLBERTISM
currency, with which Elizabeth had to deal, had been de-
liberately issued by her father and her brother; but there
bad been no decided debasement of English coinage under
any of the seventeenth century governments. Charles L
had been tempted to have recourse to this expedient, but
his advisers on the Council convinced him that the step
was unwise’. The coins issued from the Mint continued
to be of the fine standard and full weight, all through the
century ; and such masses were minted that it was surprising
that silver coins should be so scarce, and that so many of
the examples in circulation should be light, defective and
debased. The constant drain? of good money caused a very
gerious loss to the nation? and it was not easy to see to what
it was due, or how it occurred; it certainly did not appear
that any fault attached to the Government.
Ihereslts Soon after the Restoration, the government of Charles IL
of lonneng adopted, on the advice of the Council, a singularly liberal
— monetary policy. As some critics thought unadvisedly, and
lion. gs others would say prematurely, they took the bold step
of allowing the export of gold and silver bullion without
licence®, and of undertaking the free coinage of bullion®
brought to the Mint. To break so entirely with the
bullionist tradition was a bold stroke, and the report of
the Council of Trade, which recommended it. marks an era
A.D. 1689
—1776.
was not
due to de-
basement
of the
i331e8.
1 See the speech attributed to Sir Robert Cotton; Shaw, Select Tracts,
Documents tlustrative of English Monetary History, p. 27.
2 See S. P. D. James I. 73, 18 May 1611, 4 Proclamation against melting or
conveying out of the King's Dominions of gold or silver current in the same. Also
Charles I. 25 May 1627. Brit. Mus. 21. h. 1 (38).
3 Haynes (Brief Memotrs relating to the Silver and Gold Coins of England
with an Account of the Corruption of the Hammer'd Monys and of the Reform by
the Late Grand Coynage at the Tower and the five Country Mints, 1700. Brit. Mus.
Lans. MS. pooct.) puts it at between two and three hundred thousand annually,
from 1689, p. 74. He thinks that the worst clipping occurred in 1695 when the re-
coinage was imminent, p. 100. He estimates the total loss on running silver cash
as £2,250,000, p. 75.
+ Shaw, The History of Currency, 163.
6 15 Charles IL. c. 7, § 9. The preamble of the section is worth quoting: * And
forasmuch as several considerable and advantagious trades cannot be conveniently
driven and carryed on without the Species of Money or Bullion, and that if is
found by experience, that they are carryed in greatest abundance (as to a Common
Market) to such places as give free liberty for exporting the same, and the better
to keepe in, and encrease the current Covens of this Kingdom, be it enacted,” ete.
8 18 Charles Il. c. 5.
