[Sidenote: The Currency] Henry therefore resorted to an expedient as disastrous as it was dishonest--a wholesale debasement of the coinage, which was continued into the following reign and was remedied only under Elizabeth. The first experiment was made as early as 1526; but it was the financial embarrassments of Henry's last years which brought about a debasement that was almost catastrophic. From 1543 to 1551 matters went from bad to worse till the currency was in a state of chaos: and the silver coin issued in the last year contained only one-seventh of the pure metal that went to that of twenty-five years before. It followed that the purchasing power of the debased coinage sank--in other words, prices went up. On the other hand, the new coin remaining legal tender in England up to any amount, creditors who were paid in it lost heavily, the Royal debtor--and others--discharging their obligations by what was practically a payment of a few shillings in the pound. Also as a matter of course, the better coins, with each fresh debasement, passed out of the country or at any rate out of circulation, the base coins becoming the medium of exchange. Thus the foundations of commercial stability were sapped, while foreign trading operations were thrown into desperate and ruinous confusion. Nor did the evil end here. For the influx of silver and gold from the Spanish possessions in America, though its effects were felt only very gradually, tended to depreciate the exchange value of the metals themselves. This depreciation, added to the debasement, further increased the rise of prices. But while prices went up, money-wages did not rise in anything like the same proportion; labour being cheapened by the continuous displacement of the agricultural population, which was not attended by an equivalent increase of employment in the towns, and by the dissolution of the monasteries, which at the same time wiped out the sole existing system of poor-relief. The natural Economic transition that began in the previous reign, while producing wealth, was also attended by distress: now, for a vast proportion of the population, Henry's artifical expedients for filling his own coffers converted distress into grinding want, destitution, and desperation. [Sidenote: Learning and Letters] The earlier half of the reign promised well for Education; but the promise was not duly fulfilled in the latter portion. The funds which Wolsey would have devoted to that object were wanted for other purposes. The Universities discarded the study of the schoolmen, but their attention was absorbed rather by loud-voiced wrangling than by the pursuit of learning. Nevertheless, in great families at least, the education of the younger members was carried to a high pitch. The King, a man of accomplishments which would have made him remarkable in any station, himself set the example, and in this respect at least his children were not lacking; the literary impulse was at work.