| 1669 | 14.48| | | | 15.13 | | | 1669 | | 1679 | | | 14.91 | | | | | 1679 | | 1690 | | | | | 15.13 | | | 1690 | +------+------+------+-------+------+---------+------------+-------+------+ To treat of these countries in detail. [Sidenote: THE NETHERLANDS IN SIXTEENTH CENTURY] Netherlands. During the period under consideration, the seventeenth century especially, the monetary history of the Netherlands supplies the key to that of the surrounding nations. The history of her monetary exchanges has yet to be written, and of her Mint ordinances very little is accessible, as compared, e.g., with France. But this is more than compensated by the numerous "plakkaats" or proclamations of the tariff of coins, which are to us practical indicators of the rates of exchange. The Netherlands, as has been already said, were the centre of European commerce in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as the Italian States had been in the fourteenth and fifteenth; and every change in the precious metals or in the coins showed itself in the Antwerp Bourse as surely and swiftly as to-day in London. As prompt to take knowledge of these changes as Florence had been two centuries earlier, the authorities tabulated the various coinages which were current in the Low Countries,--and practically that meant the coinage of commercial Europe,--tariffed them against their own by proclamation, and instantly accommodated themselves to each new change or variation of value by a new proclamation and a new tariff. These proclamations, therefore, give us the measure and course of the monetary movements of the time in fullest and most welcome details.