a figure which is considerably above the 27 _lire_ 14 _soldi piccioli_, which Villani gives as the price of foreign silver at the time. Even taking the lower tale of 111-3/5 pieces, which the importer of silver to the Mint got for his bullion, there is a distinct margin of profit. 111-3/5 = 558 piccioli. (= 27 lire 18 soldi di piccioli.) Indeed, in its entirety, this operation of 1347 has a sinister look. At home the woollen merchants of Florence were obliged to pay wages in silver, abroad to receive payment in gold. It was to their interest to cry down the equivalence of silver; they paid less and received more. The means by which they brought the state to put upon silver a price so far removed from the market price could only be the bribe contained in the relinquishing of 5-2/3 pieces in each libbra. But such a process is in reality the beginning of debasement. If this is not the true import of the Act of 1347, it testifies all the more to the only other possible motive--the monetary straits of Florence, her want of silver for currency, and the violent effort she was prepared to make to get it. Whether by way of effect or cause it is hard to say, but certainly silver in the middle of the succeeding century had so far disappeared in the Italian peninsula, or gold so far increased during the fifteenth century, that the commercial ratio remained persistently low--1: 9.25, both in Milan and Florence; and the Mint regulations of 1460 adopted by the latter state (see under table of Florentine silver coins, Appendix), can only be looked upon as a simple repetition of the measures of 1345 and 1347. Spain. The currency history of Spain up to the conquest of America is one long list of alterations in the coinage, and of petitions from merchants and various Cortes for or against changes in the rating of the coins. The _oro gran modulo_ was rated at 100 pesetas, under Alfonso XI. of Castile, 1312-50, and at 1000 under his successor, Peter the Cruel, 1350-69. The _oro dobla Castellana_ was rated at 60 pesetas under Henry II., 1369-74; at 40 under Henry the Crafty, 1390-1406; and at 100 under John II., 1406-54. In the case of this country the troubles in the fourteenth century arose from the proximity of France, the circulation of lower-rated French coins, and the consequent depletion of the treasure of the kingdom. In Aragon, for instance, the charter of Peter IV. in 1346 had ordered the coining of gold after the same weight and fineness as of the florin of Florence. It was found too high, and three years later he was obliged to cancel it by another proclamation, ordering his own gold coins to be made of the same weight and fineness as the _écus_ of the French kings. The close of his reign and the early part of that of his successor witnessed acute crisis and distress, which led to Henry II.'s celebrated reduction of the coinage at the Cortes of Medina del Campo in 1371.