This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1832 Excerpt: ...or silver. If they paid or received the English coin at less than its legal value, they were liable to heavy penalties; and they unwillingly, therefore, embarrassed their transactions by passing them even among themselves. The lesser traders also were taught by their losses to avoid, as far as they could, the English ...
Read More
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1832 Excerpt: ...or silver. If they paid or received the English coin at less than its legal value, they were liable to heavy penalties; and they unwillingly, therefore, embarrassed their transactions by passing them even among themselves. The lesser traders also were taught by their losses to avoid, as far as they could, the English gold coin. This disinclination towards that description of money continued strong till the reign of Elizabeth, when a great and general improvement in the currency of the kingdom took place. It had not, however, wholly disappeared so late as 1774, when the great recoinage under George III. was effected; for before that operation, when the guineas by friction, by sweating, and by filing, had been greatly reduced in weight, the moidores of Portugal, which passed at twenty-seven shillings, were as general and were more preferred in all the western counties of England than the national gold coin, which, though a legal tender, had been generally very much diminished in weight. As the great dealers in money thus avoided that coined in England, and rather chose to circulate that of foreign fabrication, it Lord Liverpool's letter to the king, p. 104. does not appear surprising that at a time like the reign of Henry VII., when England had rapidly increased in wealth, the amount of its own coin of gold and silver should have been so small, as it must necessarily have been if all that had issued from its mints in two preceding centuries had been then actually in circulation. Notwithstanding the small amount of domestic coin, there must have been money to a large amount, and most certainly to a much larger one in foreign than in English coin. The riches of the kingdom increased during the reign of Henry VII. It is, indeed, true that the greater part of thi...
Read Less
