Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 2.djvu/71

Rh and new-built in and about the city of London is found to be very mischievous and inconvenient, and a great annoyance and nuisance to the commonwealth." Whereupon a fine of one year's rent is imposed on all houses erected on new foundations within ten miles of the walls of London since 1620, not having four acres of freehold land attached to them; and a fine of 100l. on all such as should be erected in future. But from the operation of the act were excepted the buildings belonging to the several city hospitals; the Earl of Clare's new market (now Clare Market), which is described as just then built; the streets about Lincoln's Inn Fields, then in course of being erected; Bangor Court in Shoe Lane, then about to be built upon the site of the Bishop of Bangor's house and garden; and some other recent erections below London Bridge and on the other side of the river. These were no doubt all the chief additions that had been made to the metropolis within the last few years.

Throughout the whole of the present period both the fineness and the weight of the silver coinage continued the same as they had been fixed in the year 1601; that is to say, the pound of Mint silver contained eighteen ounces of alloy, and was coined into sixty-two shillings. Immediately after his accession, James I. directed two coinages of gold; one of pieces of ten shillings, five shillings, and two and sixpence in value,—that is, of angels, half angels, and quarter angels—from gold of 23 carats 3½ grains fine; the other of pieces of twenty shillings and the same inferior current values, that is, of sovereigns, half sovereigns, crowns, and half crowns, from gold of only 22 carats fine. This throwing into circulation of two gold coinages of different standards must, one would think, have been attended with some inconveniences. At the same time he ordered a silver coinage of crowns, half crowns, shillings, sixpences, two-pences, pence, and half-pence. All the pieces of these first coinages are distinguished from those afterwards issued by bearing the words (for England and Scotland), instead of those denoting King of Great Britain, which was the title James assumed the following year, and which he directed, by