[Footnote 29]: The parish receiver, Johann Martin at Heldburg, writes, for example, on the 13th September, 1640, on behalf of the helpless pastor, and proposes his removal, because in this village there remained only a widow and another woman, and he himself could not obtain a groschen from the annual fees of his district, which formerly amounted to some hundred thalers.
[Footnote 30]: This was the time in the Thirty years' war when the German princes and dukes coined base money. When one prince had obtained possession of the coinage of another he melted it, and made it into new money by alloying it with copper and other metals.
[Footnote 31]: Bötzinger gives this account to his children.
[Footnote 32]: In a sheet of this kind, entitled, 'A Noteworthy Hungarian and the Netherlands New Newspaper,' 1599, has already the form and contents of a modern newspaper. It contains a short correspondence with different cities, in the form of eleven letters; amongst them reports of four vessels which had come to Amsterdam with spices, and of a new toll which the court at Brussels had levied on merchants' goods, of ten stivers on each pound of silk.
[Footnote 33]: The sources of the following description were taken from the flying-sheets and brochures, first of the year 1620-24, and also from the later writings of the sixteenth century upon coinage, a rich literature.
[Footnote 34]: The new money was almost pure copper boiled and blanched; this lasted a week, and then it became glowing red. The bottles, kettles, pipes, gutters, and whatever else was of copper, were taken away to the mint, and made into money. An honest man could not venture to lodge any one, as he could not but fear that his guest might wrench away his copper in the night, and carry it off. Wherever there was an old copper font in a church, it was taken to the mint; its sanctity did not save it; those sold it who had been baptized in it. Müller, 'Chronika von Sangerhausen.'
[Footnote 35]: A batz was four kreuzer.
[Footnote 36]: In the decrees of the Diet the words do not occur before the Thirty years' war; they appear to be new in 1621.
[Footnote 37]: In 1770 the population was only 2126; but in 1845 it had increased again to 4500.
[Footnote 38]: The Emperor was sovereign of Silesia, as King of Bohemia.