In matters of currency history it is impossible to separate the Tudor from the Stuart period, and this last and sole blunder of Elizabeth's administration only serves to show the continuity of principle or event, and how little of moral censure attaches in this matter to abused James any more than to lauded Elizabeth. But it is instructive and curious to note that the currency history of England during all the reign of Elizabeth shows such remarkable quiescence. From 1558 to the fatal blunder of 1601 there was no change in her Mint rates. The complaints of exports of coins, and the evidence of the action of bimetallic law, appears only at three isolated and widely separated periods. The inference can only be--and it is more than an inference--that her reign, besides being a period of currency expansion, was one in which the ratio existing in England facilitated the flow of metals from the Continent, and secured the permanence of that currency expansion. On this increased basis of currency was built that commercial and national, yea even literary, growth and expansion, which have made the Elizabethan age the glory of our history. Similarly, the unrest and commercial credit crises under James I. and Charles I., which resulted from the same wide causes and principles, underlay and played a vitally determining part in the agitation and revolution-sowing of their reigns, and that, too, in a manner which has never yet been appreciated. The uprisal of England, which resulted in the first dethronement of the Stuarts, was as widely and vitally based upon economic causes as upon legal or religious,--possibly, indeed, much more so, if we only knew it. At first James was determined to proceed with the monies which were being wrought by Elizabeth's warrant. But on the 11th November, in the first year of his reign, a new indenture was made for the coining of a new piece called the Unite, to commemorate the union of the two crowns of England and Scotland. While preserving the same value as the pound sovereign of Elizabeth's issue of 1601 (viz. 20s.), its weight was only 154-26/31 grains, while that of Elizabeth's was 171-61/67. In the following year the angel was reduced from 78-66/73 grains to 71-1/9. The combined effect was to raise the ratio from 10.90 (as in 1601) to 12.15. Elizabeth's blunder was thereby effectually remedied, but it was not before an outcry had been made about the decay in shipping, and in the export of English cloth.