Corruption of the government.
Recommendation of W. Lane to Sir W. Cecil, 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.[1] 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[2] 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.[3]
who acts upon it, A.D. 1551, August. Although Sir William appears to have consigned to the official pigeon-hole this thoroughly sensible
