In the following March, 1628, a committee was appointed to advise his Majesty concerning the coins, and to observe from time to time all accidents at home and abroad touching coins. Numerous schemes were proposed for the arresting of the process of export. They bear generally two characters--(1) as proposing a change of the ratio; (2) as proposing a differential issue of the silver issue coinage, i.e. coining 4d., 3d., and 2d. silver pieces at a different and higher rate than the larger silver pieces. Such schemes have no importance at the present day, save as foreshadowing the mechanism by which England finally evolved a monometallic system which permitted of the fullest retention of silver. The flow of coinage which these proposals were intended to meet was not now to the Netherlands but to France, and it must be attributed to the course of the French currency already indicated. In 1630 the names of certain merchants engaged in the transport of gold and silver were reported to the Council, together with the names of the French merchants who received the same in France. In June 1635 certain of these were arrested, and in 1638 not less than thirty-seven of them were prosecuted in the Star Chamber for this unlawful transportation. The drain went steadily on during the whole of the decade. On January 18, 1635-6, a proclamation was issued for restraint of the consumption of coin and bullion. In the following March an order of the King in Council was issued against the exportation of English and Scotch coin, and by gentlemen crossing the sea, and forbidding the wearing of jewels, etc., "because of the great quantity of money exported." Any such enactments were doomed to be futile. The true remedy, or rather the keynote of the situation, was contained in a proposition submitted to the Privy Council for the making current of certain foreign coins. "The forbidding of Spanish money in England," says the author Barrett, "was to enrich the Mint, which brought forth contrary effects, for the French, Dutch, and other nations, by advancing Spanish coins, received the greatest profit." He accordingly proposed that the King should raise the Spanish money to be current in England by proclamation. The double _pistolets_ weighing 16s. to be raised to 15s.; the _piece of eight_ weighing 5s. to be raised to 4s. 6d., "and when there is store brought into the kingdom, then have a new proclamation to call in these coins to be stamped with a mark and apprised to the intrinsic value." The step was not adopted, and by his Majesty's declaration of 1639 in the Star Chamber, gold and silver were to be considered commodities of merchandise. "By 1640 there was not in the kingdom a million of silver," says Sir Ralph Maddison in a memorial. "Gold and silver," said Sir Thomas Roe in his speech on trade in the Commons, "are very scarce, and the kingdom is impoverished. Money has been drawn away into other kingdoms, especially into France