Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 4.djvu/508

488 of Richmond 500 lb. By this proceeding more than 150,000l. worth of base silver coin was thrown at once into circulation, deranging prices worse than ever, shaking the exchange, driving the gold out of the country, and producing its varied complications of disastrous consequences none the less certainly, because the council could excuse themselves from the straits to which the Protector's extravagances had reduced the public revenues, and because the theories of the financiers concealed from them the mischief which they were creating.

It is one of the first duties of a historian to enable the reader to distinguish between the general faults of an age and the special faults of individuals, for which they may be legitimately held responsible.

As an account of the extraordinary confusion to which the currency was reduced, by a long course of changes at home and abroad, I give the following address to the Council of Edward VI., from the Harleian MSS. 660. The date is probably 1551.

'Your humble suppliant, Humfrey Holt, pondering the great enormities growing of late unto this realm, by the greediness of a number of merchants, with others, that have sought to call out for their private gainings the best of our moneys here made, and so hath transported the same into foreign realms, to the great decay and abasing of the same, by reason they be of so many divers and sundry standards in fineness, as well of the coins of gold as also of the silver moneys,—in consideration thereof, and to bring the said coins to one perfect and uniform standard, that all such culling might cease, and all men by the same be like benefitted,—I, your humble servant, have thought good to signify unto your honours, not only the rates and valuations of the same, but also which losses the King's Majesty hath and daily doth sustain, if remedy be not provided in that behalf.

'1. The old sovereigns, half-sovereigns, royalls, half-royalls and quarter-royalls, angels and half-angels, being 24 carats fine gold, are better than their current value after the moneys in Flanders, in every pound twenty