Volume I
The Rise of the Gold Standard, 1660-1819
64
c. 1700
Excerpts from Hopton Haynes’ Brief memoire relating to the
silver and gold coins of England, with an account of the
corruption of the hammered moneys; and of the Reform of the
Late Grand Coynage At the Tower and the five County Mints In
the years 1696, 1697, 1698, and 1699. Haynes worked at the
Royal Mint from boyhood, and was appointed weigher and teller in
1701 on the recommendation of Isaac Newton, which is reproduced
below. His manuscript is regarded as a major source for later
seventeenth century English monetary history. These excerpts
summarise the circumstances in England immediately prior to the
recoinage.
———
The silver moneys of England as well as the coins of all other countries are liable to abuse
by these three following methods:
1st, by alteration of the standard appointed by public authority.
2nd, by melting them down and converting the metal to other uses.
3rd, by exporting them into foreign countries, to carry on a trade [...]
And by all those methods was the whole stock of the cash of this kingdom excessively
impaired before the late grand coinage.
For the 1st. the standard of our silver moneys appointed by the government was
notoriously violated. By the standard is here meant that particular weight and finesness in
the silver moneys which was settled by Queen Elizabeth and continued all her time, and
after it, through the reigns of her several successors down to her present majesty, and
was lately confirmed by act of parliament [...]
These were the just weights, and the legal fineness of our silver moneys coined with the
hammer, of which sort the far greater part of the cash of the whole kingdom did consist;
but they were very liable to be clipped and diminished in their weight, because very few
of these pieces were of a just assize when they first came out of the Mint. So many
pieces, I suppose, were by the moneyers cut out of a bar of standard silver, as did pretty
exactly answer the pound weight troy; and the tale of the pieces required in that weight,
by the indenture of the Mint: but though all the pieces together might come near the
pound weight or be within remedy; yet divers of them compared one with the other were
very disproportionable, as was too well known to many persons, who picked out the heavy
pieces, and threw them into the melting pot, to fit them for exportation, or to supply
silver smiths.
And according to the best observation of goldsmiths and others the clipping of our coins
began to be discoverable in great receipts a little after the Dutch war in 1672, but it made
no great progress at first for some years: and the silver moneys of Queen Elizabeth were
very little diminished [...] But the yearly loss by clipping made terrible advances every
year from 1686 [...] In the latter end of 1695 the public loss upon all the clipped money
Volume I
The Rise of the Gold Standard, 1660-1819
65
then actually current (if one may judge of the whole [...]) was at least 45 per cent. by
mere clipping and light counterfeit pieces, which upon the whole running silver cash of
the kingdom amounts to 2,250,000l. [...]
The whole kingdom was in a general distraction by the badness of the silver coin and the
rise of guineas, for no body knew what to trust to; the landlord knew not in what to
receive his rents, nor the tenant in what to pay them. Neither of them could foretell the
value of his moneys to-morrow. The merchant could not foresee the worth of his wares at
two or three days distance, and was at a loss to set a price upon his goods. Everybody was
afraid to engage in any new contracts, and as shy in performing old ones, the king
subsisted his forces in foreign parts at a disadvantage of seven or eight per cent. interest
and five per cent. premio for money borrowed here, besides the loss by the exchange
abroad: and how to provide for the next years expense, was a mystery.
———
Source: Bland, Brown, and Tawney, eds., 1915, pt. 3, no. 6.3, pp. 677-678; Fisher and
Jurica, eds., 1977, 6.37, pp. 384-385. For manuscript copies, see GL, MS 72; BL,
Landsdowne MS 801. For a brief biographical note on Haynes, see Nichols, ed., 1812-1815,
2, pp. 140-141n.
