156

HISTOEY OJF ENGLAND.

chap, she was suffering severely from the defective state of that in-— ? xl ' — strument by -which her material -wealth was distributed,conimer Saturday, the second of May, had been fixed by Parliamentciaurisis as the last day on which the clipped crowns, halfcrowns andland shillings were to be received by tale in payment of taxes.* TheExchequer was besieged from dawn till midnight by an immensemultitude. It was necessary to call in the guards for the purposeof keeping order. On the following Monday began a cruelagony of a few months, which was destined to be succeeded bymany years of almost unbroken prosperity.**

Most of the old silver had vanished. The new silver hadscarcely made its appearance. About four millions sterling, iningots and hammered coin, w r ere lying in the vaults of theExchequer; and the milled money as yet came forth very slowlyfrom the Mint.*** Alarmists predicted that the wealthiest andmost enlightened kingdom in Europe would be reduced to thestate of those barbarous societies in which a mat is bought witha hatchet, and a pair of mocassins with a piece of venison. v

There were, indeed, some hammered pieces which hadescaped mutilation; and sixpences not clipped within the inner-most ring were still current. This old money and the new moneytogether made up a scanty stock of silver, which, with the helpof gold, was to carry the nation through the summer.f Themanufacturers generally contrived, though with extreme dif-ficulty, to pay their workmen in coin.ft The upper classes seem

* The Act provided that the clipped money must be brought in beforethe fourth of May. As the third was a Sunday, the second was practicallythe last day.

** LTIermitage, May ■&, 3696; London Newsletter, May 4., May 6. Inthe Newsletter the fourth of May is mentioned as “the day so much takennotice of for the universal concern people had in it.”

*** London Newsletter, May 21. 1696; Old Postmaster, June 25.; LTIcr-mitage, May

t Haynes’s Brief Memoirs, Lansdowne MSS. SOI.

See the petition from Birmingham in the Commons’ Journals,Nov. 12. 1696; and the petition from Leicester, Nov. 21.