whole subject was again gone into, for the fiftieth time, for the advice of the English Privy Council, and it was shown how "foreign exchangers contrived, by arranging a rise or fall in particular monies, to undervalue English monies, and draw them out of the kingdom. Prevention has been vainly attempted by Acts of Parliament, by sending over Sir Thomas Gresham to the Low Countries to complain, and by establishing the office of exchanger, which was discontinued as injurious to the State. A bank was proposed, but the Queen had not to spare the £100,000 needed to start it. It is now proposed to settle the exchange at 10 or 12 per cent., to be fixed yearly, according to the state of affairs, 20 per cent. or more being sometimes paid now."
The naïveté and helplessness of the suggestions Page 74 contained in these concluding words need not blind us to the real and pressing gravity of the monetary situation to which they relate, and which periodically beset each and every European Government throughout the centuries under consideration.
Such, therefore, is the aspect of these monetary ordinances or plakkaats of the Netherlands in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
To speak of them in detail.
The first of the Low Country proclamations, containing an evaluatie, or tariff, is dated 2nd January 1516, and it marks the commencement of the influence of the American discoveries. (See table below.) By