Chapter X: Introduction (8)

=1695.= About this time Luttrell tells of the arrests of “nests” of coiners, among them an attorney in the Temple, and a merchant in Birchin Lane; at one time 105 coiners and clippers lay in Newgate awaiting trial. The condition of the coinage became a great question of State so pressing that after six Proclamations on the subject an Act 7 and 8 William III c. 1 (1695-6) was passed “An Act for remedying the Ill State of the Coin of the Kingdome.” The Act recites that “the Silver Coins of this Realm (as to a great part thereof) doe appeare to bee exceedingly diminished by such persons who (notwithstanding several good laws formerly provided and many examples of justice thereupon) have practised the wicked and pernicious crime of Clipping until att length the course of the Moneys within this Kingdom is become difficult and very much perplext, to the unspeakable wrong and prejudice of His Majestie and His good Subjects in their Affairs as well Publick as particular and noe sufficient Remedy can bee applied to the manifold Evils ariseing from the clipping of the Moneys without recoining the clipt pieces.”

Then follow very lengthy provisions for dealing with coins of “Sterling Silver or Silver of a courser Allay then the Standard” from which we may infer that the Government had played its part in the debasing of the coinage.

This was followed, in the same year, by an Act, c. 19 “to incourage the bringing Plate into the Mint to be coined and for the further remedying the ill State of the Coine of the Kingdome.” The next year saw another