Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 7.djvu/24

 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [cir. 41. that which lacked in fineness exceeded in weight/ l and ihey were really worth fourpence halfpemty. The fourth kind, the tester of three ounces, was worth only twopence halfpenny ; but ' the worst passed current with the best ' in the payment of the statute wages of the artisan or labourer. The working man was robbed without know- ing how or why, while the tradesmen and farmers, aware that a sixpence was not a sixpence, defied the feeble laws which attempted to regulate the prices of produce, charged for their goods on a random scale, and secured themselves against loss by the breadth of margin which they claimed against the consumer. The earliest extant paper on the subject in the reign of Elizabeth is the composition of the Queen herself. With the rise in prices the landowners generally had doubled their rents, while the rents of the Crown lands had remained unchanged. The ounc'e of silver in the currency of the Plantagenets, instead of being coined into the five shillings of later usage, had been divided only into a quarter of a mark, or three shillings and four pence. Elizabeth proposed to return to the earlier .scale, and retaining the same nominal rent of which she found herself in receipt, to allow 'the tenants of im- proved rents to answer their lords after the rate of the abatement of value for every pound a mark ; ' 2 while 1 Paper on Coinage : endorsed in Cecil's hand, Mr Stanley's opin- ion : Domestic MSS., Elizabeth, vol. xiii. - Wherein,' she said, ' the lord i:uii not be much hindered, being able to perform almost every way as much with the mark as he was with the pound.' (Opinion of her Ma- jesty for reducing the state of tho coin, 1559) : Domestic MSS. Eliza- beth.