Mint matters henceforth fell into the separate jurisdiction of the various Circles. The Lower Circles went their own way at their meetings at Cologne (1566, 1572, and 1582), as did the Upper Circles in their separate meetings in 1564 and 1572 at Nördlingen and Nürnberg.
At its meeting at Lüneburg in 1568 the Lower Saxon Circle adopted a system not far removed from that of the third Imperial Mint Ordinance of 1559. The mark of fine silver was to be coined into 10 florins 43 11⁄67 kreutzers, and the thaler was fixed at 24 groschen (=72 kreutzers).
Underneath this separately concerted action of the Circles, however, licence and disorder prevailed in the issue of smaller pieces of a grossly depreciated nature, before which the good heavy silver species disappeared, leaving the greatest confusion, together with a continual rise in prices or fall