In September the clothworkers and dyers of London complained in a petition of their want of employment, and that many thousands of them were in the greatest distress. So great was the want in the country districts that a proclamation was issued ordering all persons of quality in London and Westminster to go to the country, and reside on their estates, for the relief of the poor in the dearth. In January 1623 fears of disturbance in Essex were rife, "because of poor clothworkers, the masters being unable to employ the men, and many who were thought the wealthiest were likely to become bankrupt." On the 7th of February the officers of the Mint reported to the Council that they found the value of the Spanish _real of eight_ to be equal to 4s. 6-1/2d., as compared with the new shilling coin; and on the 4th of March following a proclamation was issued to make these Spanish _reals_ current at 4s. 6d., "in hopes of bringing some of that coin to the Mint." From this time onwards no further references, save one laconic remark in May 1623, "the poor do not complain much," occur in the State papers to this, one of the acutest currency crises in our history; and we are left to follow the process of recovery and the dumb, inarticulate agony of the widespread ruin in sympathy and imagination merely. The details here given are taken entirely from the State papers, stolid and ungarnished, but the tale they tell is momentous and dire in its importance. When consulted by the Privy Council, the various committees and delegates of the merchants attributed the crisis to the deceits practised in the manufacture of cloth, to the embargo on its sale, and other such causes, as well as to the scarcity of money, and the loss in exchange. The first suggestion is hardly worth a moment's consideration. Every testimony points to the fact that the crisis was as purely a monetary or currency crisis, as later crises have been distinguishedly credit crises. Between 1613 and 1621 hardly any silver monies were coined in the English Mint; for example, between 1617 and 1620 the total silver coinage was only £1070, whereas in the four succeeding years the silver coinage at the Tower Mint amounted to £205,500. [Sidenote: ENGLAND: JAMES I.]