MINTS and the great
recoinage of 1696
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Coin supply was erratic in the late seventeenth
century. In money terms, up till 1695 far more gold was turned into coin than
silver. To put it into perspective:
1. Between 1660 and 1695 £3,302,193 (£3.3
million) was coined into silver.
2. In the same period £6,676,986 (£6.7 million)
was coined into gold
3. The annual rate of coinage production varied
enormously. Between 1691-5 a total of just £17,167 was coined in silver, an
average of £3433 per annum. Between 1666-70
£422,626 was coined into silver, an average of £84,525 per annum.
Why was so little silver coin produced in England?
Gold coins had had their monetary value increased: in 1601 1lb of 22-carat gold
was coined into £33 10s; by 1670 the same amount of gold was coined into £44
10s. This increased the physical number of coins, and raised the value of gold
in England so bullion came in, and gold coins stayed there because they were
worth more than on the Continent. Silver was in exactly the opposite position.
The same amount of money was coined out of a pound of silver across the period
and, since silver bullion was worth more on the Continent, coins were exported
there and promptly melted down. Moreover, new gold bullion was being produced
at a higher rate than silver from mines so there was quite simply more gold
available for coining.
In England it was all change in 1696 when the
great recoinage was ordered to make good the shortage of silver coin which was
now affecting daily commerce.
‘Mony still continuing exceedingly
scarse [= scarce], so as none was
either payed or received, but on Trust, the mint not supplying sufficient for
common necessities’
John Evelyn, Diary 24 May
1696
Most coins were struck in London, but
occasionally branch mints were used to help bulk supplies. In 1696 William III
ordered the old hammered coinage to be demonetized since so much of it had been
clipped down by people filching silver to sell as higher-priced bullion. This
meant the coins were all sorts of different shapes and sizes, making nonsense
of their face value. Halfcrowns, for instance, were supposed all to be worth
the same but in practice each coin had a different amount of silver in it.
Since everyone relied on the intrinsic value of coinage, the mess was
disrupting the process of exchange and affecting the relationship of silver
coins to gold.
A vast quantity of new coinage was produced in
1696 and the next, some of it from mints at Bristol, Chester, Exeter, Norwich
and York. Between 1696-1700 £5,106,019 in silver was made compared to the
£3,302,193-worth coined in the preceding 35 years. In the frenzy to produce the
new coins many were issued with minor errors in the legends or design,
typically missed letters, inverted letters or misspellings.
To pay for the work, on 10 April 1696:
King William gave the Royal Assent
for granting several Duties upon Houses, for making good the deficiency of the
clipt [=clipped] Money.
Then the old coin was taken back in by weight
rather than face value:
10 June 1696: A Proclamation Issued,
requiring all Receivers and Collectors of the Publick Taxes to take hammer’d
Silver Money at five shillings and eight Pence an Ounce.
Mr Salmon, The Chronological
Historian, London 1723, p. 220, 224
THE NEW
COINS OF 1696: these coins were struck in the great recoinage of 1696.
In size order the coins shown are: crown (40mm), halfcrown (33mm), shilling
(25mm) and sixpence (21mm). In addition the smaller denominations (4d and so
on) were also struck from 1697 and 1698 on. The crown reverse with crossed
shields (right) was used on all the coins apart from the 4d and smaller silver.
All these types had been issued on and off since 1663 but in varying
quantities. From 1696 on, only milled coins made from 1663 on could be used and
now the numbers produced were astronomical compared to former years.
The new coins were struck from bullion and
plate (6.5%), and melted-down hammered coins (93.5%) with London responsible
for about 2/3 of the total. Did it solve things? Not really, because it took
time to produce the new coin much of which promptly disappeared into hoards or
abroad, and much of it was melted down because silver bullion was still worth
more than coin of the same weight.
‘Want of current money to carry on
not onely the smallest concernes, but for daily provisions in the Common
Markets; Ginnys [=Guineas] lowered to
22s: & greate sums daily transported into Holland, where it yields more,
which with other Treasure sent thither to pay the Armies, nothing considerable
coined of the new & now onely current stamp, breeding such a scarsity, that
tumults are every day feared’
John Evelyn, Diary 11 June
1696
Not only that but production also rapidly
tailed off by 1698. In many years following, little or no silver was struck at
all. So it is a miracle any of it survives today. By 1760 silver coins were
said virtually to have disappeared from circulation altogether.
It had proved totally impossible to maintain a
dual system based on gold and silver. This was because although the coins had a
fixed denominational relationship, gold and silver’s respective bullion values
varied unpredictably – this in practice usually meant silver was worth more as
bullion.
England eventually committed itself to a gold
standard. The only way to keep silver functioning as coin was to reduce its
value so that in coin form it was worth more than the bullion of the same
weight. In 1816 that was what happened: the new recoinage under George III
which began in that year produced coinage with a reduced silver content so that
it would always be worth more as coin than silver. The system persisted for a
little over a century. Bullion shot up in value after the First World War and
once more England’s silver coins were worth more as bullion than coin. So from
1920 on silver coins had only 50% silver. In 1947, in the aftermath of the
Second World War, even that was removed altogether. Since then England’s coins
have been produced from base metals apart from gold sovereigns and other
special bullion silver issues not normally used for circulation.
The best book on this subject is Li, Ming-Hsun,
The Great Recoinage of 1696-1699, London 1963
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