The Royal injunctions relative to ecclesiastical reforms, published in February, 1695, were followed by other Royal injunctions relative to theological disputes in February, 1696. Just then, a money panic struck not only the commercial classes, but the whole community. The currency sank into such a state, that owing to the wear and tear of coin, and the ingenious arts of clippers, neither the gentleman who paid his guinea nor the peasant who received his shilling, knew exactly what the piece of gold or silver happened to be worth. The subject came up in sermons, and preachers deplored the low state of public morality. Fleetwood, preaching before the Lord Mayor of London in the month of December, deplored that “a soft pernicious tenderness slackened the care of magistrates, kept back the under officers, corrupted the juries, and withheld the evidence;” and one of the clergy connected with the Cathedral of York, when addressing some clippers who were to be hanged next day, dwelt on the insensibility of culprits of that class to the heinousness of their crime.[248] Exactly at the time when this monetary question had thrown everybody into a state of embarrassment, a theological controversy added to the excitement of religious people. [Sidenote: 1693–8.] To judge of the new Royal injunctions we must first understand the controversy, and to understand the controversy is no easy matter. To trace the dispute through all its windings would only perplex the reader--to enumerate the publications which appeared would be wearisome and profitless; therefore I shall content myself with indicating the different lines pursued by the principal controversialists, and the treatment which consequently some of them received.