On the 23rd March 1615 a further proclamation was issued against the export of gold and silver coin, and in the following year the exports of the East India Company were limited to £6000 in bullion or specie. The Mint officials proposed a raising of the denomination, and again the matter was hotly debated in and out of the Council. But a different race of men from Raleigh had succeeded, and, on the 31st December 1618, the Privy Council determined that "silver shall not be raised in value at present, and uniformity in the weight of the coin is to be observed; the melting of gold for braid or plate forbidden, but further regulations postponed till the committee for exchanges bring their report." [Sidenote: ENGLAND: THE MEASURES OF 1619] As it happened, owing to the necessity of replenishing the King's finances, the question had become complicated, and some of the measures proposed for staying the coin had a more sinister bearing, as is apparent in one of the schemes referred to (_supra_, p. 136), being, in short, cloaked proposals of debasement. In setting its face against such proposals of debasement the Council was right, but such proposals had relation only to the King's finances, and not to the currency crux, and in delaying the proper tariffing of the English against the continental coins the Council did wrong. By 1619 the evil had risen to so great a height that the Council determined to act upon its own proclamations. Eighteen merchants were sentenced in the Star Chamber for exporting gold (8th December 1619), five being acquitted. The total of the fines imposed on the sentenced men reached £140,000, and it was stated that since the beginning of the reign a matter of £7,000,000 of gold had been surreptitiously exported. On the 31st July 1619 proclamation was issued for a new coinage. The gold _angel_ was reduced in weight from 71-1/9 grs. to 64-11/15, being equivalent to an increase of an eleventh in its denominational value: and in January 1620, following the convictions of the merchants referred to, the Council busily debated "the erecting an exchange for monies, to prevent the export of silver by the goldsmiths who have been the offenders." All these steps were taken too late, and the currency crisis which shook Germany ran its full course, too, in England.