The petition of the weavers.
Although it may now be a matter of surprise that such laws remained so long in force, we find even in our own time considerable sections of the community who would if they could[110] have all legislation adapted to suit their own wants, like the ropemakers of Bridport, or the weavers of the whole realm, who in the reign of Philip and Mary,[111] induced the Legislature to pass an Act containing the following extraordinary provisions: “Foreasmuch as the weavers of this realm, have, as well at this present parliament as at divers other times, complained that the rich and wealthy clothiers do in many ways oppress them, some by setting up and keeping in their houses divers looms, and keeping and maintaining them by journeymen and persons unskilful, to the decay of a great number of artificers which were brought up in the said science of weaving with their families and their households; some by engrossing of looms into their hands and possession and letting them out at such unreasonable rents as the poor artificers are not able to maintain themselves, much less to maintain their wives, families, and children; some also by giving much less wages and hire for weaving and workmanship than in times past they did, whereby they are enforced utterly to forsake their art and occupation wherein they have been brought up. It is, therefore, for remedy of the premises, and for the avoiding of a great number of inconveniences which may grow if in time it be not foreseen, ordained and enacted by authority of this present parliament, that no person using the feat or mystery of cloth-making and dwelling out of a city, borough, market town or corporate town, shall keep or retain or have in his or their houses or possession, any more than one woolen loom at a time, nor shall by any means, directly or indirectly, receive or take any manner of profit, gain or commodity, by letting or selling any loom or any house wherein any loom is or shall be used or occupied, which shall be together by him set or let, upon pain of forfeiture for every week that any person shall do the contrary to the tenor and true meaning hereof, twenty shillings.”[112]
In this unwise Act, the spirit of which still prevails among many of the working classes of England, and still forms in many other countries the basis of commercial legislation, another clause provided that weavers who lived in towns might have two looms but no more, so that as many persons as possible might be employed in their own houses, and, without the aid of capitalists, earn and obtain their own independent living—thus treating capital and labour as not merely distinct interests, but as opposed to each other.
State of the currency, A.D. 1549.
Its depreciation.
The currency was then as it is now, a question on which a multiplicity of opinions were entertained; but the coins of the realm were in those days tampered with by the State to an extent sufficient to afford even a chancellor of the exchequer of our own time an excuse for attempting to mulct the sovereign of one per cent. of its gold to cover the cost of coinage and provide a seigniorage for the Crown. In 1549 a pound weight of silver was coined into 7l. 4s., out of which the Crown retained 4l. for seigniorage and cost of minting, paying the merchant only 3l. 4s. for his silver.[113] Of course the prices of all articles rose to the level of the metallic value of the current coin, and that, too, in the teeth of the numerous statutes passed to regulate prices, and in defiance of proclamations forbidding sales except on conditions specified by law. Indeed, coins of the realm became mere tokens, and though convenient enough for the people at home, were of no value abroad beyond that of the amount of pure metal they might happen to contain; hence exchanges with foreign countries ceased to be any longer intelligible. The measure of corn worth formerly, on an average, ten shillings and sixpence, sold in 1551 for six shillings and eightpence, and rose to thirty shillings in the following year.
Corruption of the government.
Recommendation of W. Lane to Sir W. Cecil,
To make matters worse, there were in those days men high in authority who reaped pecuniary advantages from the debasement of the currency. Indeed those of the Lords of the Council who had provided funds for the suppression of the rebellion adopted the following extraordinary if not nefarious means of repaying themselves. They addressed a warrant to the Master of the Mint, setting forth that “Whereas our well-beloved councillor, Sir William Herbert, in suppressing 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,” and requesting that 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.[114] By this transaction Sir William realised a profit of 6710l., and as similar privileges were extended to the remaining Lords of the Council, and other favoured persons about court, more than 150,000l. worth of base silver coins were thus thrown at once upon the market, producing, as might have been anticipated, numerous commercial complications and disasters. By such means as these monarchs, as well as councillors, at that period of English history paid their debts. Edward VI. records in his journal[115] that Yorke, the Master of the Mint, by a process easily enough understood by men of business, but unintelligible as described by his Majesty, had undertaken to pay all his debts, amounting to something more than 120,000l., and to remain accountable for the overplus. The description of this process will be found at length in a letter from William Lane, merchant of London, to Sir William Cecil, wherein, too, its evils are exposed, with much excellent advice for his guidance in the future.[116]
who acts upon it, A.D. 1551, August.