silver in the Mint hath been so scarce though Gold more plentiful.... In the mean time we do humbly offer ... that there is no necessity ... to raise your coin, either in the one kind or in the other. [Sidenote: _Registers of Privy Council_, as above, p. 46. (C. O.)] But rather that the same may draw with it many inconveniences; and because the noise thereof through the City of London and from thence to other parts of the Realm, as we understand, hath already done hurt and in some measure interrupted and distracted the course of general commerce, we think it very requisite ... that some signification be forthwith made from this Table time to raise your coins.’ The course thus recommended—and in the recommendation the Council seems to have been well nigh unanimous—was precisely the course JAMES did not wish to take. The Council Books abound with proof how hard it was to dissuade the King from adopting this ‘intended project of enhancing the coin [_i. e._ by debasing the standard], though, as COTTON afterwards said at the Council Table, to do so would trench, both into the honour, the justice, and the profit’ [_i. e._ the real and ultimate profit] ‘of my royal Master very far.’ In his address at the Board, Sir Robert made an almost exhaustive examination of the history of the English Mint. He did it with much brevity and pith. His views about foreign trade are, of course, not free from the fallacies which were accepted as aphorisms by very nearly every statesman then living. But his advice on the immediate question at issue is marked by sound common sense, by insight and practical wisdom. [Sidenote: MS. LANSD., 811, ff. 148–152 (B. M.) [Compare the Report of Proceedings in the House of Commons, Feby. 1621. (_Parl. Hist._, vol. i, c. 1188–1194).]] His speech told, and he followed it up by framing, as Chairman of a Committee, (1) an _Answer to the Propositions delivered by some Officers of the Mint_; and (2) _Certain General Rules collected concerning Money and Bullion out of the late Consultation at Court_. Copies of both exist amongst the Harleian and Lansdowne MSS., and both, together with the Speech, are printed in the _Posthuma_ (although not without some of the Editor’s characteristic inaccuracies). The next question which it was Sir Robert’s task to discuss before the Privy Council was a much more momentous question than that of the Coinage. It was, potentially, both to Sovereign and to people, an issue of life or death.