Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 2.djvu/69

Rh Mint in the Tower. But the despotic act of Charles I. in seizing, a few months before the meeting of the Long Parliament, a sum of 200,000l, which was lodged here, under the name of a loan, having destroyed the security of that place of deposit, it then became customary, we are told, though the statement seems a strange one, for merchants and traders to intrust their cash to the keeping of their clerks and apprentices, until the breaking out of the civil war, when the said clerks and apprentices fell into the habit of running away from their masters and going to the army: so that, at last, about the year 1645, commercial men first began to place their cash in the hands of goldsmiths; until which time, it is stated, the business of the goldsmiths of London consisted merely in buying and selling plate and foreign coins of gold and silver, in melting and culling these articles, in coining some at the Mint, and in supplying with the rest the refiners, plate-makers, and merchants, according to the variations of the price. "This new banking business," the account proceeds, "soon grew very considerable. It happened in those times of civil commotion, that the parliament, out of the plate, and from the old coin brought into the Mint, coined seven millions into half-crowns; and, there being no mills then in use at the Mint, this new money was of very unequal weight, sometimes two-pence and three-pence difference in an ounce; and most of it was, it seems, heavier than it ought to have been in proportion to the value in foreign parts. Of this the goldsmiths made, naturally, the advantages usual in such cases, by picking out or culling the heaviest, and melting them down, and exporting them. It happened, also, that our gold coins were too weighty, and of these also they took the like advantage. Moreover, such merchants' servants as still kept their masters' running cash, had fallen into a way of clandestinely lending the same to the goldsmiths, at four-pence per cent, per diem (about six per cent, per annum); who, by these and such like means, were enabled to lend out great quantities of cash to necessitous merchants and others, weekly or monthly, at high interest; and also began to discount the