In 1391-93 another general proclamation was issued, ordering a reduction of the value of the monies and fixing new rules of exchange, and this was followed by one in 1398, prohibiting the circulation of foreign coins in Spain, except at bullion value. This latter was a common device, as will be seen in the case of our own country. It proved ineffectual to prevent the outflow of the metals, and when re-enacted in 1413 was found to be of as little avail. The Cortes of 1442 (Valladolid) complained bitterly, in a petition, of the money drawn away from the realm by foreign merchants, and in the same year a fresh ordinance was issued to readjust the values of the native monies to the foreign coins. In this schedule, _doblas de la Banda_ were rated at 100 _maravedis_, and the _florin d'oro d'Aragon_ at 65 _maravedis_. In 1473, only thirty or so years later, by the charter of Henry IV., issued at Segovia, these coins were rated at 300 and 200 _maravedis_ respectively. It was only with the advent of the Catholic sovereigns that the internal disorder and want of unity of the Spanish system was effectually remedied, in the very hour of that discovery of a new world which was to put upon Spain the vital function of distributing the new stores of precious metals (see account of Spanish monies, Appendix III.). Germany. The movements of the precious metals in Germany--which, as far as the ratio of the two metals is concerned, may be held to include the Netherlands up to 1552, when Flanders withdrew from the monetary system of the Holy Roman Empire--is a record of exactly the same process of natural and gradual appreciation of the _metal_ (i.e. depreciation of the weight and fineness of the _coin_) as in Spain, France, and England. In the accompanying tables the movement of silver is illustrated by means of the groschen, and that of gold by the Rhenish gulden. These coins, it need hardly be said, were not unit coins, nor sole prevailing. They are chosen from the bewildering variety with which the numerous independent Mints of Germany have succeeded in perplexing posterity, as being of relatively greater repute and wider acceptance, and because it is a simply impossible task to combine all the denominations of these coins, in order to deduce an average. Up to 1375 the German gold coin was minted in close imitation of the Florentine florin. The weight was 53 grs., as was that of the Florentine piece; and the lily and St. John, the guardian saint of Florence, were both employed in the two coins, the German piece being indeed issued at first under the denomination, _Florin d'or_.