Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 2.djvu/74

72 purpose a mint was established, in 1637, at the castle of Aberystwith, in Cardiganshire. These mines ultimately yielded about a hundred pounds of silver a-week; and the mint at Aberystwith proved of considerable service to the king: during his war with the parliament. Of several other mines, the ore of which was tried by workmen brought out of Germany, those of Slaithborne in Lancashire are said to have yielded four per cent, of silver; those of Barnstaple in Devonshire and Court-Martin in Coenwall, ten per cent.; and those at Miggleswicke and Wardel, in the county of Durham, six or eight per cent. In this reign, also, was introduced, by Nicholas Briot, a native of France, the process of fabricating coins by machinery, instead of by the hammer, the only method hitherto employed. Briot, driven from France, where he had been graver general of the coin, by the intrigues of persons whose interests were opposed to his ingenious improvements, appears to have come over to England about the year 1628, and in 1633 was constituted chief engraver of coins for the mint in the Tower of London. He remained in this country till he was recalled to France by the Chancellor Seguier, about the year 1640. While he presided over the cutting of the dies for the English coinage, it was considered to be the most beautiful then known. Among other pieces of his striking is one in gold, of the weight of 8 pennyweights 18½ grains, "with the king's head," says Leake, "admirably well done, bare-headed, and the lovelock, as it was called, hanging before, which, it seems, was so disagreeable to the Roundheads (so called from the contrary extreme) that Prynne wrote a book against it, called 'The Unloveliness of Lovelocks.'" This, being dated in 1630, must have been among the earliest of Briot's productions. After the war had begun and the parliament had seized the Tower, Charles set up mints at Shrewsbury, Oxford, York, and other places, most of the money coined at which has the mint mark of the Prince of Wales's feathers, as having been struck by the workmen and instruments belonging to the establishment at Aberystwith. The greater part of it appears also to have been made, in the