and there are no longer means of testing the justice of their claims; but it is easier to give an opinion of the means by which those claims were satisfied. On the 28th of October a warrant was addressed to the Master of the Mint, setting forth that whereas the well-beloved Councillor Sir William Herbert, in suppression of the rebels, had not only spent the great part of his plate and substance, but also had borrowed for the same purpose great sums of money, for which he remained indebted—the officers of the mint might receive at his hands two thousand pounds weight in bullion in fine silver—the said bullion to be coined and printed into money current according to the established standard—the money so made to be delivered to the said Sir William Herbert, with all such profits as would otherwise have gone to the Crown after deducting the expenses of the coining.[1] The profit to Sir William Herbert, beyond the sum which he would have received as a bullion merchant for the 2000 lb. of silver, was 6709l. 19s.; and immediately afterwards the same privilege was extended to Warwick, Arundel, Southampton, Paget, Dorset, Russell, Northampton, for an equal sum to be raised by similar means. Sir Thomas Wentworth, Lord Wentworth, Sir Thomas Darcy were allowed to coin 2000 lb. between them; Huntingdon, Clinton, and Cobham, 1000 lb. each; and the Duchess
- ↑ Harleian MSS. 660. According to Ruding's Tables, vol. i. p. 183, a pound of silver was coined, in the year 1549, into 7l. 4s.; of which, the Crown, for seignorage and cost of minting, took 4l., paying the merchant 3l. 45.; but the seignorage varied from month, to month, and so apparently did the cost and the materials of the alloys.
