The Money-changers' Guild was one of the oldest in Florence, its consuls being named on the same footing as the rest in all public records; and a copy of its statutes, dated 1299 (1300 new style), makes reference to an earlier code of 1280, that was not the earliest of all. This craft prospered and waned with the commerce of Florence. It was carried on in the New Market, where it had shops with counters or _tavoletti_, money-bags, and ledgers. All business had to be performed in the shop, and registered in the account book, and heavy penalties were exacted for any infringement of the rule; nor was any one allowed to exercise the craft without being inscribed on the matriculation list, a privilege only to be obtained by having given proofs of capacity and honesty during matriculation, and sworn to obey the statutes of the guild. In 1338 there were about eighty of these money-changers' stalls, and Florence coined from 350,000 to 400,000 gold florins.[353] In 1422 these stalls numbered seventy-two, while it was calculated that Florence had a capital of two million florins in circulation, without including the value of the merchandise in the city.[354] In 1472, partly because the first signs of the decline of trade were appearing, and partly because trade was becoming restricted to a more and more limited number of firms, the banks were already reduced to thirty-three,[355] although the chronicler Benedetto Dei still remarked with pride that these bankers did business in the East and the West, "as is well known to the Venetians and Genoese, and likewise to the Court of Rome."[356] They were everywhere known by the names of changers, lenders, usurers, Tuscans, and Lombards, and, together with other Italian houses, had a street of their own both in London and Paris. IV.