It was August of 1696, and exactly a year since the fall of Namur had induced France to consent to open negotiations for a peace. A Congress sat now at Ryswick, but with at present little hope of immediate success. The King was again with the troops in Flanders, and England was face to face with the most momentous crisis in her history. There was, literally, not enough money to carry on the Government. When the King had returned from the last campaign, he had supported Somers and Montague in the recoinage scheme, by which the mutilated and clipped money of the realm was to be reminted; the plan was so daring as to frighten most of the King’s advisers, but Montague, having secured a certain Isaac Newton as master of the Mint, proceeded to put his plans into execution with skill and address. He was also largely responsible for the scheme of the Bank of England, which, after paying a million and a half for its charter, had enjoyed the confidence of the Government until Robert Harley and Foley revived Chamberlayne’s wild project of a Land Bank. The King, anxious for money to commence the campaign and carry on the government during his absence, had passed an Act before he prorogued Parliament, establishing the Land Bank, which was to advance him two and a half millions at seven per cent. The Tories declared that their scheme would soon ruin the earlier bank; Charles Montague thought so too, though he and most other thoughtful observers were certain that the Land Bank was an unpractical conception, a mere delusion. But the country was not with them; the country gentlemen, Whig and Tory, believed they saw an infallible way of obtaining riches, the King wanted the money too much to inquire into the means that produced it, and the Land Bank appeared to flourish while the Bank of England tottered and showed every sign of ultimate failure. The Directors found it impossible to redeem the paper money that they had put in circulation, and that malice or necessity demanded the payment of. There was scarcely any money to be had; the mint worked day and night to turn out the new milled coin, but the moment it appeared it was hoarded by the panic-stricken public. The paper money fluctuated in value so as to be almost useless, stock jobbers caused constant scares on the Exchange, credit was paralysed, and the country was only held together by Montague’s device of exchequer bills bearing a small rate of interest. The discovery of the assassination plot and the Jacobite schemes of invasion had strengthened the King’s position at home and made him as popular as he had been in ’88, but it had resulted in the recall of the fleet from the Mediterranean, the renewed supremacy of the French in those waters, and the instant defection of the Duke of Savoy, thus causing the first rift in the coalition that William’s unwearied skill had maintained against the arts of Louis for seven years.