The Mint officials at once represented that this only increased the evil. Henry accordingly assembled at Pontoise a conference of experts, and as the outcome of their deliberations decided on the adoption of the chief recommendation of the Mint officials' representation. By his proclamation of 13th November 1577, the reckoning by livres was abolished and that of gold écus substituted, values of under 1 écu or 60 sols. to be settled in divisional coinage, and circulation of all foreign coins prohibited, with the exception of Spanish and Portuguese gold ducats. It was forbidden to constrain payment of any sum above 100 sols. in billon money, and in sums below that amount to present more than the third of the total sum in such billon money. Page 88
This extraordinary and, on the whole, admirably planned reformation merits so much detail because of the intense importance of its bearing. It in effect anticipated the reformation which was only accomplished in England in our own century. So far as it was actually put in practice it made France monometallic. The instinct of the time had found its way to a comprehension of the evil before it, and of the remedy. The evil was due to a badly-regulated, weltering, bimetallic system; the remedy was a monometallic system. It matters little that such terms were not in use and that the theory of the matter was not enunciated. The essential