The threatened rise of monetary denomination on the part of the Netherlands was accomplished by their ordinance of 15th April 1539, and almost immediately Henry found himself necessitated to change the basis of his currency from that established in 1527. In 1542 the silver penny was reduced from 10-1/2 to 10 grains, and shortly after 1544 the angel was advanced from 7s. 6d. to 8s. The proclamation which enforced the change is dated 16th May 1544. Gold was raised from 45s. to 48s. the oz., and silver from 3s. 9d. to 4s. In the purchase price of the two metals, therefore, there was no change in the ratio, but calculating on the basis of the issue price, i.e. the pieces issued from the Mint, the alteration of ratio was from 11-59/220 to 10-10/23. In the proclamation the change was attributed to "the enhancement of the prices of these metals beyond the sea, as well in Flanders as in France, which would have drawn all the coins out of the realm if a remedy had not been applied. And although the customers of the ports of the kingdom had been ordered to put in execution the statutes for the conservation of the coins, yet for the great gain they were still secretly carried abroad." The coinage measures, therefore, of the year 1544, when justly considered, do not possess the aspect which has been generally attributed to them. It is incorrect to look upon them as the tentative beginning of that debasement of the coinage which disgraced the later years of the reign of Henry VIII. and the days of his son Edward VI. The measures of 1544 were simply acts of justifiable self-defence and currency safeguard. The real debasement began two years later, in 1545-46, when, by indenture, the silver coins (_testoons_) were reduced from 10 oz. to 4 oz. fine silver, the 2 oz. of alloy in the former case being increased to 8 oz. in the latter. In 1550 the content of fine silver in the testoon was further reduced to 3 oz. The plan of this history makes it incumbent to treat questions of debasement as standing apart from the subject-matter of the book, which is restricted to the natural and normal ebb and flow of the precious metals, due to the action of bimetallic law. The operation of debasing a coinage--of lowering it, that is, so far and so arbitrarily as to remove it at once from the action of natural law of prices ruling around--means an arrestation of natural economic processes and laws, and the events which follow thereupon stand apart from such laws and ought to be treated as so separate. In reality, debasements always favoured the action of this malignant bimetallic law, and the fact might possibly lead one to attribute to the normal action of a natural law what is in three-fourths of it due to arbitrary action of government. It would be, therefore, unfair to treat of debasements in a history of bimetallism.