Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 5.djvu/29

1551.] with Catholic recusants, who would not relinquish the mass, or with persons guilty of 'lewd talk,' or 'seditious words;' this or that prisoner, as his place was required for another, being taken out to have his ears slit, or to be set upon the pillory. The greatest of the offences of the Government, the issue of base money, was drawing to an end; but it was ending as hurricanes end, the worst gust being the last.

In the teeth of statutes, in defiance of proclamations, prices rose to the level of the metallic value of the current coin, and, at last, rose beyond it. The exchanges ceased to be intelligible. In the absence of accessible tests, and with coin circulating of all degrees of purity and impurity, the common processes of buying and selling could no longer be carried on, and the council were compelled at last to yield before the general outcry.

From the enormous quantity of base silver which was now in circulation, the honest redemption of it appeared, and at the time, perhaps, really was, impossible. It remained, therefore, to throw the burden upon the country, to accept the advice of the city merchants, and call it down to its actual value. By this desperate remedy every holder of a silver coin lost upon it the difference between its cost when it passed into his hands, and its worth as a commodity in the market. Taking an average of the whole coin in