"From the year 1621," says one of the informers of 1638, to whose petition reference will be shortly made, "many goldsmiths and cashiers of London culled the weighty shillings and sixpences to make into plate, silver wire, and to other manufactures; for most of that time, we having wars with Spain, little or no silver came from thence; so likewise hath little or no silver from France in that time, and no silver could be brought out of Holland by reason it went so high by the placard. For sterling silver passed in Holland for 4d. per ounce higher than it was made in our Mint, sterling being in Holland at 5s. 4d. per ounce, so that no silver could be imported from Holland to supply our Mint, which the goldsmiths and others perceiving presently fell a-culling the silver monies current, and the money being coined in the Mint at 5s. 2d., the goldsmiths, finers, and wire-drawers did raise it up to 5s. 3d. per ounce, and melted down into the weight of shillings and sixpences, and left none to pass betwixt man and man but light monies and clipped, and did exceed the rate of the Mint by giving for sterling 5s. 3d. per ounce, and 5s. 3-1/2d., and sometimes more; by which means there was no silver brought into the Mint for ten years to speak of but the silver which came from Wales. This will appear by the Mint books." The testimony only confirms the previous inference. The whole reign of James I. was a period of inefficient attempts to rate the English coinage to the incessant rise in the continental coinages, of consequent drain of specie to the Netherlands, and of practical closing of the Mints at home. The cause, opportunity, channel, or machinery of the drain was the incessantly shifting, badly tariffed, imperfectly understood bimetallic system of the times; and the crisis of 1622 was only the most patent expression of its malignant action. It is doubtful whether the political effect of that crisis has been properly estimated by the constitutional student of the popular revolution under the Stuarts. Its commercial, currency, and economic and theoretic influence has certainly, and much more, been hitherto overlooked. [Sidenote: ENGLAND: CHARLES I.] The reign of Charles I., and the period of the Commonwealth, display similar characteristics to that of James I., but in a more modified and less malignant measure. Putting aside, after one nearly fatal slip in August 1626, the various propositions for a debasement which were made early in his reign, Charles made, throughout, no change in the denomination or value of his coins, and no change in the ratio. In 1627 the export of coinage became again perceptible, and a warrant was issued for erecting a Royal Exchange between England and Scotland, September 28, and for a proclamation forbidding all indirect practices of merchants, and underhand buying of uncurrent coin and foreign bullion.