For a dozen years or so after this no further complaints of a gold drainage are heard, but in 1597 they recommence. "If good provision be not foreseen the coins of gold and silver of England will flow over to the Low Countries as fast as they can be coined," is the testimony of a document of April in that year, "for the _angel_ and _sovereign_ of England are current in Holland and Zealand at 18s. the piece of Flemish money, and our silver much after the same rate." And the writer adds: "I see no harm to this realm, if the French gold coin was permitted to be current for 6s. 2d., the Spanish gold _pistole_ for 6s., and the silver _real of eight_ for 4s." It was under the influence of this movement, of which more complaints exist among the Domestic State Papers, that the final Elizabethan revision of the Mint prices of the metals took place. On the 18th March 1600 she issued a proclamation "concerning coin, plate, and bullion of gold and silver," reciting that "bullion of gold and silver, etc., for these later years, have been much more abundantly transported and conveyed away than in any former times," and commanding the observance of the statutes against such transport. Finding her proclamation mere waste paper, Elizabeth resorted to the only safe and possible expedient, a change in the issue rate of the coinage. But for once her instinct, or the wisdom of her councillors, failed her. Instead of raising the ratio of gold to silver, she lowered it from 1:11-1/10 to 1:10-5614/5921. It is inconceivable that such a blunder should have been committed at a time when the production of silver had advanced and was advancing by leaps and bounds beyond that of gold, and when the currency of every European country of commercial note was being accommodated to the depreciation of silver with unerring instinct. But so it was, and the blunder only served to accelerate and intensify the catastrophe under James I. [Sidenote: ECONOMICS OF THE PURITAN REVOLUTION]