Speaker 1: This is an I Heart original, so picture this. It's
Speaker 1: early January, it's cold and wet. You're cold and wet.
Speaker 1: You're in London, close to the Thames, where the narrow
Speaker 1: streets are filthy and prone to flooding. You decide to
Speaker 1: head to a coffee house for a nice, warm dish
Speaker 1: of coffee. Yes it is a dish. You approach the
Speaker 1: bar and the woman behind it. A dish of coffee
Speaker 1: goes for about a penny, but pennies really, all silver
Speaker 1: coins are in short supply these days, so what are
Speaker 1: you going to pay with? You plunge your freezing fingers
Speaker 1: into your pocket. If you're a woman, this pocket is
Speaker 1: a little pouch tied to your waist. And if you're
Speaker 1: a man and your fashion forward, it's sewn into your clothes.
Speaker 1: But let's be honest, you're definitely a man if you're
Speaker 1: going to a coffeehouse, because most ladies weren't permitted. You
Speaker 1: pull out a silver penny, an old, busted, handhammered silver
Speaker 1: penny made before the restoration of the monarchy, some thirty
Speaker 1: odd years prior. You place your penny on the counter nervously.
Speaker 1: The coffee house made eyes it suspiciously. She picks it up,
Speaker 1: testing the weight in her hand. It's a little bit thin,
Speaker 1: the edges look worn. From what she can tell, the
Speaker 1: king on it has been dead for more than half
Speaker 1: a century. Is she going to accept it? Given where
Speaker 1: we are in time, there's a very good chance that
Speaker 1: she won't. So why would the coffeehouse maid reject your
Speaker 1: busted penny money's money? Right? Well, yes and no, because
Speaker 1: right about now, that's a bigger question than you might think,
Speaker 1: and it's one that will dictate not only the career
Speaker 1: of Isaac Newton, but also William Challoner. For I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: I'm Linda Rodriguez mcrabie and this is Newton's Law and
Speaker 1: I Heart Original podcast. You are making episode two, No
Speaker 1: Silver Linings, Act one. For what it's worth, the coffee
Speaker 1: house made might not take your coin because it's so degraded.
Speaker 1: But the fact was, in early most of the coins
Speaker 1: being traded throughout the country were degraded. England's currency is
Speaker 1: in crisis. You know that if you spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time in coffee houses, because these are places where
Speaker 1: people talk, and one of the things people were definitely
Speaker 1: talking about was the ongoing problems with the coinage, because
Speaker 1: the terrible thing when a man cannot poaches a dish
Speaker 1: of coffee for want of coin, I blame the mint.
Speaker 1: Barely the thin worn coins. Shopkeepers refuse them, and one
Speaker 1: can barely discern between counterfeits, and they've justly made. There
Speaker 1: are rumors that Parlament men and the Treasury and the
Speaker 1: men are all planning to do something about it, but
Speaker 1: as yet they haven't. So while everyone holds their breath
Speaker 1: and waits for whatever the government decides, the status of
Speaker 1: your particular coin hangs in the balance. The coffee housemaid
Speaker 1: can decide that your coin is simply too busted and
Speaker 1: turn you down, but then that means she's missing out
Speaker 1: on a sale, or she can accept a coin that
Speaker 1: is possibly worthless, or at least worth less. So say
Speaker 1: she does accept your battered coin, maybe against her better instincts,
Speaker 1: and you get your dish of coffee. You settle down
Speaker 1: at a table. There are a couple of newspapers and
Speaker 1: gazettes and pamphlets around, and you listen to the chatter
Speaker 1: I have heard. The doctor is Newton is to be
Speaker 1: the warden of the mint. Indeed, I do hope you
Speaker 1: should have more to do with the affairs of the
Speaker 1: mint than the last warden. Okay, what was going on
Speaker 1: with the coinage? Well, we are going to get into
Speaker 1: that big time because it's the reason for this whole shebang,
Speaker 1: but we're going to first put that question on hold.
Speaker 1: We're going to start with another question. What actually is
Speaker 1: a coin? At its most basic coin is money a
Speaker 1: representative way to store value. We can exchange that value
Speaker 1: for other things, goods and services. So money is a
Speaker 1: medium of exchange, a way to facilitate trade or purchasing.
Speaker 1: And from way back in the day, metal was ideal
Speaker 1: for this representative exchange function because it was something that
Speaker 1: most people agreed had inherent value, It was easily transferable,
Speaker 1: it was durable, and it was easily divisible on like
Speaker 1: say a cow. Metal coins date back to around six
Speaker 1: b C with the Lydians people and what's now to Turkey.
Speaker 1: Minting started in Britain in the second century b C
Speaker 1: with the various Celtic tribes, and then in a more
Speaker 1: regular way with the Romans. There was a mint in
Speaker 1: London dating from the third century, but then the Romans
Speaker 1: left and London went through a kind of wild adolescence.
Speaker 1: But By the time about For the Great, the ninth
Speaker 1: century Anglo Saxon ruler who really laid the groundwork for
Speaker 1: the unification of England's various sovereign states, there was a
Speaker 1: working mint in the city turning out the kingdom's coins.
Speaker 1: By the seventeenth century, England's monetary system was based on
Speaker 1: a bi metallic standard, high denomination gold coins and lower
Speaker 1: denomination silver coins, and the coins derived their value from
Speaker 1: the actual weight of the gold or silver they contained.
Speaker 1: A penny, for example, was worth a penny because that
Speaker 1: was the value of the twenty four grains of silver
Speaker 1: it contained. Because unlike today where we have coins and
Speaker 1: we we just hand them over, the kinage in the
Speaker 1: eighties six nineties relies on its weight in silver to
Speaker 1: give it its value. That's Chris Parker, historian at the
Speaker 1: Royal Mint. As in the same royal mint that Alfred
Speaker 1: the Great started back in the ninth century and the
Speaker 1: one that Newton becomes warden of in the seventeenth century,
Speaker 1: and that still makes our coins now in the twenty
Speaker 1: first century. Anyway, value based on weight seems very logical.
Speaker 1: But here's the problem. By the sixteen nineties, many many
Speaker 1: of the coins in circulation, like You're busted penny did
Speaker 1: not contain the amount of silver their face value promised
Speaker 1: they did. So if you had a coin that was
Speaker 1: reduced in weight because it had silver removed from it,
Speaker 1: it had lost some of its value, and you could
Speaker 1: go to a shop and try and buy a shillings
Speaker 1: worth of goods with a worn, battered, degraded shilling, the
Speaker 1: shopkeeper isn't going to take that shillings value because he
Speaker 1: can see it's lost weight. So as a huge problem
Speaker 1: from an economic perspective that you're affecting trade. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're lucky got that coffee, But why wouldn't your penny
Speaker 1: contain those twenty four grains of silver? After all? Isn't
Speaker 1: it the job of the Royal mint to make sure
Speaker 1: that it did well? Yes, but in the six nineties
Speaker 1: several long simmering problems had just come to the boil.
Speaker 1: First start, many of the coins were so degraded because
Speaker 1: the vast majority of those coins were hand hammered. Hand
Speaker 1: Hammering was how coins had been made for pretty much
Speaker 1: as long as there had been coins. This was an
Speaker 1: imprecise process. Coins were never each quite the same. The
Speaker 1: engravings were often off center. The edges weren't milled, meaning
Speaker 1: they didn't have the finish or the grooves that you
Speaker 1: see on modern coins. This irregularity meant that they degraded
Speaker 1: or looked degraded more easily, and some people, a lot
Speaker 1: of people took advantage of this. The easiest and perhaps
Speaker 1: most damaging way people messed with the coinage was clipping.
Speaker 1: People would him off a tiny amount of metal around
Speaker 1: the edge of the coin, then hammer the coin thinner
Speaker 1: to make up the size, and then they'd gather up
Speaker 1: all those tiny silver shavings, combine them and melt them
Speaker 1: down into bars or ingots and sell those off. This
Speaker 1: was free money, and it was easy to get away
Speaker 1: with because it was difficult to tell a coin that
Speaker 1: was intentionally clipped from one that was just old. Everybody
Speaker 1: was degrading the coinage because it was in such a
Speaker 1: poor state anyway, and so once you get a majority
Speaker 1: of people doing it, it's it sort of takes away
Speaker 1: the stigma of doing something illegal, particularly when it's being
Speaker 1: done by respected banker's shopkeepers. People were just doing it
Speaker 1: on a regular basis. It sounds almost trivial, what's a
Speaker 1: little off the edges, But This was a tremendous problem
Speaker 1: because again it degraded the actual value of the coin
Speaker 1: in your hand. Philosopher John Locke wrote, I do not
Speaker 1: see how in a little while we shall have any
Speaker 1: money or goods at all in England if clipping be
Speaker 1: not immediately stopped. Clipping is a great leak, which for
Speaker 1: some time past has contributed more to sink us than
Speaker 1: all the forces of our enemies could do. Some Mark
Speaker 1: and Newton included even suspected that foreign powers were trimming
Speaker 1: English money just to synchronation that much faster. The terrible
Speaker 1: state of the hand hammered coins also meant that they
Speaker 1: were easier to counterfeit using less valuable materials. You didn't
Speaker 1: even have to do a very good job. Well, if
Speaker 1: you can imagine what you're trying to counterfeit is nothing
Speaker 1: except a very very badly worn blank disc with some
Speaker 1: vague images on it that's over a century old. Incredibly
Speaker 1: easy because you don't have to be a very good artist,
Speaker 1: You don't have to be a very good engraver. You
Speaker 1: can knock up some incredibly substandard eyes and you can
Speaker 1: put something out there that very easily resembles a batted,
Speaker 1: worn shilling sixpence or half crown that was over a
Speaker 1: century old. It wasn't that difficult. Counterfeiting and clipping often
Speaker 1: went together. Sometimes clippers would melt down all those little
Speaker 1: slivers of silver to use in counterfeiting new coins. Clipping
Speaker 1: was so widespread that counterfeiters often clipped their own fakes
Speaker 1: to make them seem more authentic and counterfeiting well. Counterfeiting
Speaker 1: was so rampant that some estimates claimed that one out
Speaker 1: of every ten coins in circulation was fake. That was
Speaker 1: super bad for people at all levels of English society,
Speaker 1: from the Chancellor of the Exchequer to the butcher, baker
Speaker 1: and candlestick makers. Not to mention the seventeenth century baristas.
Speaker 1: Silver was the lifeblood of the economy. This is what
Speaker 1: everyone would have used to pay for daily expenses. If
Speaker 1: there wasn't enough of it to go around, or if
Speaker 1: what there was was debased and distrusted costs rows astronomically,
Speaker 1: economic life ground to a halt. The thing was, it
Speaker 1: didn't have to be this way. The Mint had a
Speaker 1: solution right there in its workshop. Act two. Msieur Blondeaux
Speaker 1: and his marvelous machines. Peter blonde was an engineer at
Speaker 1: the Paris Mint when he was noticed by England's Parliament
Speaker 1: in sixte How and why he was noticed I don't
Speaker 1: know that. The important part is that the Treasury Committee
Speaker 1: believed that Blondo had worked on improving the French coin,
Speaker 1: specifically with using these new machines to mill, press and
Speaker 1: edge coins, and that he could be persuaded to come
Speaker 1: to England. This was a year of massive political upheaval.
Speaker 1: Charles the First was beheaded by the Parliamentarians, ending the monarchy.
Speaker 1: Oliver Cromwell appeared in general ame Lord Protector of the
Speaker 1: newly made Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Wales, and he
Speaker 1: also canceled Christmas. The change in regime necessitated a change
Speaker 1: in coins, after all. In addition to being a medium
Speaker 1: of exchange, coins are also an easily disseminated reminder of
Speaker 1: who's in charge. Blundo was invited by Parliament's Mint Committee
Speaker 1: to demonstrate his milling and edging technique in sixteen fifty.
Speaker 1: That year, after showing his very fine pieces to the committee,
Speaker 1: Blundo published a pamphlet a bit of propaganda, describing the
Speaker 1: benefits of his machinery. A humble representation of Peter Blundo,
Speaker 1: followed by another a most humble memorandum from Peter Blunde.
Speaker 1: Spoiler alert, these were not humble. Blondo started by pointing
Speaker 1: out everything that was wrong with hand hammered coins. The
Speaker 1: money coined with emma can not to be made exactly long,
Speaker 1: nor equal in weight and bigness, and is often ghostly
Speaker 1: marked and have many odds of folds, which gives a
Speaker 1: great facility to the false coiners to counterfeit it also
Speaker 1: to the clippers to clip it, it being very hard
Speaker 1: to discern between eclipped piece in one note clipped. Blondo,
Speaker 1: as the Treasury knew, had a better way. Milt coinage
Speaker 1: was a German invention dating as far back as fifty
Speaker 1: Instead of hammering an image into a blank coin, Milt
Speaker 1: coining used a screw press to sink the engraving deep
Speaker 1: into the metal. The innovation was brought to France, where
Speaker 1: the mechanism was improved and adopted by the engineers at
Speaker 1: the Paris meant the machines produced regularly sized and weighted
Speaker 1: coins with precise images, which made them more difficult to counterfeit.
Speaker 1: But Blondo's edging technique was the real start, allowing him
Speaker 1: to put a grooved finish or even a phrase on
Speaker 1: the edges. This would make a coin nearly impossible to
Speaker 1: clip without detection. Blundo wasn't the first to introduce these
Speaker 1: machines to the Royal Mint, however, previous attempts had largely failed,
Speaker 1: and you can chalk that up to a few things.
Speaker 1: The cost of setting up and running the new machines
Speaker 1: was considerable, and they were rumored to break down easily.
Speaker 1: There was also the English distrust of anything foreign, especially French.
Speaker 1: But perhaps more significantly, there was the fact that the
Speaker 1: Company of money Ears, more or less hereditary Union Slash Guild,
Speaker 1: had had the exclusive contract with the Mint to produce
Speaker 1: the coins for centuries, but in sixteen fifty the New
Speaker 1: Commonwealth needed new coins, and the Treasury was willing to
Speaker 1: give Blundo a chance. The money Ears for obvious reasons,
Speaker 1: We're not It didn't help that Blundo not only wanted
Speaker 1: their job and claimed they were rubbish at it, but
Speaker 1: he also accused the money Ears of corruption. In his pamphlets.
Speaker 1: He alleged that the hammered coin fresh from the Mint
Speaker 1: was of disparate weights, and that this was intentional and
Speaker 1: it was the poor he said, who suffered for it,
Speaker 1: which turns to the great ruin and destruction of commerce
Speaker 1: and undoing those poor people who spend their money little
Speaker 1: by little. Blondo was essentially accusing the money Ears of
Speaker 1: serious corruption, of fraud. This really piste them off, of course,
Speaker 1: and they came back with a pamphlet of their own,
Speaker 1: a most humble remonstrance for Peter blonde Also not humble.
Speaker 1: The moneyers responded that Blondo couldn't do anything that they
Speaker 1: couldn't already do, branded him a liar, and slammed him
Speaker 1: for daring to claim that the money they made was
Speaker 1: ill favoredly coined. Blondo, they said, not only maligned the
Speaker 1: good name of the company of money Ears, but also
Speaker 1: most falsely to imprint in the hearts and minds of
Speaker 1: all people in Christendom, and more especially the good people
Speaker 1: under the obedience of the Parliament of England, that the
Speaker 1: monies of this Commonwealth are not justly made. Blondeau was
Speaker 1: undermining not only English confidence in the currency, but global
Speaker 1: confidence in it as well with his force and scandalous libels.
Speaker 1: In sixteen fifty one, the Treasury decided to settle the
Speaker 1: matter with a competition a money off. Treasury officials said, fine,
Speaker 1: each of you design and make a half crown, a
Speaker 1: shilling and sixpence coin, and we'll see which ones are better.
Speaker 1: David Rammage, the provost of the moneyers, was their champion.
Speaker 1: Provost was an elected position, meaning that Rammage was a
Speaker 1: man of some reputation and power. And now in the
Speaker 1: Great money Off of sixty one, this reputation and the
Speaker 1: reputation of the company and its contract with the Mint
Speaker 1: was on the line. I mustn't file damn that frenchman's
Speaker 1: block ready set money make Brammage made the coins in
Speaker 1: the way that they always had, Using a hammer in
Speaker 1: his own hands, he placed the plan, set the blank
Speaker 1: coin on the anvil die to get the alignment perfect.
Speaker 1: Holding the top die in place, he swung the hammer,
Speaker 1: bringing it down on the die and stamping the image
Speaker 1: into the metal. One done, h two oh three. Blundo
Speaker 1: and his team meanwhile got his machines rolling one two, three,
Speaker 1: ten seconds remaining. I. By the end of the allotted time,
Speaker 1: Rammont had made twelve coins, twelve coins that were a
Speaker 1: bit wonky, that didn't quite look all the same, twelve
Speaker 1: coins that looked like most of the money passed throughout
Speaker 1: the Kingdom, which is to say not great. Blondo meanwhile
Speaker 1: made three hundred coins, three hundred perfectly weighted, regularly sized
Speaker 1: coins of impeccable quality and design, complete with a lettered
Speaker 1: edge that no clipper could clip. On the half crown piece,
Speaker 1: it read truth in Peace Ste Peter Blonde's inventor facet
Speaker 1: That's Latin for he made congratulations to Mont Senior Blondo
Speaker 1: and his marvelous machines. Ram failed Blundo one. But despite
Speaker 1: the fact that Blondo's machines were clearly superior, the treasury
Speaker 1: passed on them. They just couldn't afford it. After all,
Speaker 1: it takes money to make money. But then a stroke
Speaker 1: of luck, the English fleet captured a load of Spanish
Speaker 1: treasure at the Battle of Cadiz in sixteen fifty six,
Speaker 1: and suddenly the Commonwealth was able to pay for Blondo
Speaker 1: and his machines. But then Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell's death
Speaker 1: in sixteen fifty eight more or less ended the protector
Speaker 1: at experiment, and it left Blundo without well a protector.
Speaker 1: He shipped his machinery off to Edinburgh and himself back
Speaker 1: to France, and he would have stayed there too, had
Speaker 1: it not been for the terrible quality of the coins
Speaker 1: minted for the restoration. King Charles the second Blundo was
Speaker 1: invited back in sixteen sixty two, and this time given
Speaker 1: a twenty one year contract. The money ears might even
Speaker 1: have gotten to keep their jobs too, because these machines
Speaker 1: still needed skilled men to run them. So the monarchy's
Speaker 1: back blunders back and Christmass back to Huzza. Things should
Speaker 1: have been good, right whoa not so much? Act three
Speaker 1: Fighting the Silver Bullet. In sixteen sixty three, Samuel Peeps,
Speaker 1: the famous diary writer, a guy who was everywhere in
Speaker 1: the seventeenth century, toured the mince facilities. This was just
Speaker 1: after Blundo set up shop. Some of the machines were
Speaker 1: meant to be secret, but Peeps was a man who
Speaker 1: knows some people. He later becomes one of Newton's closest friends.
Speaker 1: We were sharing this method of making new money from
Speaker 1: the beginning to the end, which is so pretty. They
Speaker 1: say that this way is more charged to the king
Speaker 1: in the old way, but it is meter freeer from
Speaker 1: clipping or counterfeiting. The putting of the words upon the
Speaker 1: edge is not to be done without an engine of
Speaker 1: the charge, and noise that no counterfeit will venture upon,
Speaker 1: and it employs as many men as the old and
Speaker 1: speedy for the next thirty years. The Mint used these
Speaker 1: machines to make the coins when they made the coins,
Speaker 1: which wasn't an all the time kind of thing. If
Speaker 1: you want a sense of what made Peep so giddy,
Speaker 1: listen to Chris Barker describe how they worked. The Mint
Speaker 1: will get the raw bullion coming in and then they
Speaker 1: will melt down the gold and silver and they will
Speaker 1: cast them out into thin strips to get them to
Speaker 1: the correct thickness for coining. The next part of the
Speaker 1: processes you put them through a machinery which actually blanks them.
Speaker 1: So you're getting the blank discs out of that strip
Speaker 1: of metal, and they'll be weighed to make sure that
Speaker 1: the correct weight, and then you've got a sufficient blank
Speaker 1: and ready for processing. You will end up striking the
Speaker 1: coin using something called screw press, a ginormous t shape.
Speaker 1: The blank was sandwiched between the dyes which carried the images.
Speaker 1: One was on the end of the tea and one
Speaker 1: was on the anvil. Two strong men would turn the
Speaker 1: screw press, wishing the blank in between the person you're
Speaker 1: gonna reserve your sympathy for as a gentleman who's doing
Speaker 1: the putting the blanks on and flicking the finished coin
Speaker 1: all or off, because they've had their fingers crushed repeatedly
Speaker 1: by having several tons descend on them as they're trying
Speaker 1: to put blanks and flicked finished coins off. Finally you
Speaker 1: get a finished coin after that striking process. The smaller
Speaker 1: coins had a milled grooved edge, and the larger coins
Speaker 1: had a phrase decks at tutaman, which was Latin for
Speaker 1: a decoration and a safeguard. Fun fact, this phrase was
Speaker 1: on the coins until two thousand seventeen when the new
Speaker 1: pound coin was introduced and the machines did do what
Speaker 1: Blondo promised they would. It was harder to clip a
Speaker 1: machine mild coin, and it was harder to counterfeit them,
Speaker 1: and yet clipping and counterfeiting persisted. In fact, they got worse.
Speaker 1: Why because the Treasury never recalled the old hand hammered coins. Honestly,
Speaker 1: it is exactly like the scene in foulter Geist when
Speaker 1: Craig T. Nelson is all, you moved the cemetery, but
Speaker 1: you left the bodies, didn't you. And just like in
Speaker 1: foulter geist. The old coins caused all kinds of problems.
Speaker 1: This basically left two sets of coinage in the country,
Speaker 1: the good new machine mild coins and the bad old
Speaker 1: hand hammered coins, and both were legal tender. Silver was
Speaker 1: still being clipped off the old coins and much the
Speaker 1: time leaving the country to be sold elsewhere. Counter Fit
Speaker 1: coins flourished because your basic coiners could still do a
Speaker 1: brisk business knocking out messy hand hammered coins. Meanwhile, some
Speaker 1: clever if you like William Chaloner had figured out how
Speaker 1: to fake these supposedly unfakeable coins. Compounding the problem. People merchants,
Speaker 1: especially tended to hoard the good coins. Chris Barker, You've
Speaker 1: got these brand new, lovely regular coins. What are you
Speaker 1: going to do. If you're a normal individual who sees
Speaker 1: these coming into coming into them through the banks and
Speaker 1: through their change. You're not going to use and spend
Speaker 1: those brand new coins. You're going to hold them because
Speaker 1: you know they have a good value. So if you're
Speaker 1: slightly and scrupulous, what you'll do is you melt down
Speaker 1: the good coins because you know exactly the way, you
Speaker 1: know exactly the fineness. You can create bullion, which you
Speaker 1: can then sell onto the continent as a profit. The
Speaker 1: price of silver had recently gone up in some markets,
Speaker 1: meaning that silver was worth more as buoy on the
Speaker 1: raw metal basically in continental Europe than it was as
Speaker 1: face value coins in England. This is what's called arbitrage,
Speaker 1: which is basically exploiting the difference in price commodities fetch
Speaker 1: in different markets for a profit. So English silver is
Speaker 1: being sold for continental gold, leaving only the bad, old,
Speaker 1: degraded coins in the hands of the people, and by
Speaker 1: the sixteen nineties it was estimated that only one out
Speaker 1: of every two hundred coins was a machine milled coin.
Speaker 1: The rest were old and busted and below weight or
Speaker 1: just straight up fake. What all of this added up
Speaker 1: to the clipping the counterfeiting the arbitrage markets was that
Speaker 1: there was a serious shortage of silver, and the longer
Speaker 1: the old coins stayed in circulation, the longer clippers and
Speaker 1: coiners stayed in operation, and the supply of silver coins
Speaker 1: perpetually shrank. By now, the stock of real silver coins
Speaker 1: from the pennies to the crowns had dwindled almost to
Speaker 1: the point of extinct. That might explain why the coffee
Speaker 1: has made took your penny. She didn't know when she'd
Speaker 1: see another. The situation became more problematic after the so
Speaker 1: called Glorious Revolution of which removed the Catholic King James
Speaker 1: the Second from the throne and put his Protestant daughter
Speaker 1: Mary and her husband, the Dutch Prince William of Orange
Speaker 1: on it. The new regime needed new coins. These are
Speaker 1: a representation of royal authority and royal power even back then.
Speaker 1: Still for a lot of people in rural area, is
Speaker 1: the only sort of representation that they would have of
Speaker 1: the monarchy. You want to have this image of authority
Speaker 1: coming across by your coinage, not you don't. You don't
Speaker 1: want to be represented at home and abroad by a
Speaker 1: coinage that is it's such poor condition that you can
Speaker 1: barely stand musta. But it wasn't just about how things
Speaker 1: looked again, the coin is the representation of the monarch.
Speaker 1: If it's busted, folks might start one, or if the
Speaker 1: monarchy is busted too. If you go boil it back
Speaker 1: down to the basics, think about what a coin is
Speaker 1: and why we actually have any designs on a coin
Speaker 1: at all. The design is on there to show that
Speaker 1: this piece of metal, this this piece of silver is
Speaker 1: of a given value, in a given weight, and as
Speaker 1: royal approval. You know it's got the seal of Royalty
Speaker 1: on it. Therefore you know you can trust it, and
Speaker 1: you know you can accept it. And this gets us
Speaker 1: to the heart of what a currency really is. Trust.
Speaker 1: It's an agreement at this moment in history, it's an
Speaker 1: agreement that this shilling weighs this amount of silver because
Speaker 1: the king or queen really Parliament says it does. The
Speaker 1: marks on the coins were a shorthand for the value
Speaker 1: they represented, but also represented the authority that guaranteed that value.
Speaker 1: So if the people don't trust the currency, if the
Speaker 1: people can't agree that this penny is worth a dish
Speaker 1: of coffee, then the people have a problem and the
Speaker 1: government has an even bigger problem. This is also why
Speaker 1: the punishment for counterfeiting or clipping was so severe, public
Speaker 1: disemboweling and head on a spike severe. These were socially
Speaker 1: and economically destabilizing crimes that hacked at the authority of
Speaker 1: the government. In William Lowndes, the Secretary of the Treasury,
Speaker 1: wrote to the country's brightest thinkers to ask them what
Speaker 1: to do, including Isaac Newton, who was still lecturing to
Speaker 1: the walls up in Cambridge. Economics as a discipline hadn't
Speaker 1: really been invented yet, so Lowndes was casting his net
Speaker 1: pretty wide for solutions. Newton, like pretty much everyone else,
Speaker 1: had the same answer. Recall all the old bad coins,
Speaker 1: make them no longer legal tender, and remnt them duh.
Speaker 1: Newton also suggested that the Treasury make the intrinsic and
Speaker 1: extrinsic values of the money the same. The intrinsic value
Speaker 1: of the coin was its value on the market. The
Speaker 1: extrinsic was the face you. By making those the same
Speaker 1: and reducing the silver content and devaluing the currency in
Speaker 1: the short term, it would keep people from being able
Speaker 1: to make money off melting it down and selling it
Speaker 1: in another market. The Parliament didn't agree to that kind
Speaker 1: of currency manipulation, although they probably should have. You go
Speaker 1: too far, Newton too far? Anyway, it shouldn't have taken Newton, philosopher,
Speaker 1: John Locke, architects or Christopher Wren, East India Company governor,
Speaker 1: Sir Josiah Child, and a bunch of other prominent people
Speaker 1: to convince Parliament, but it sort of did. In late
Speaker 1: Parliament finally agreed. So gone are all these medieval thin pieces,
Speaker 1: and we've instead of replaced with you know, shiny, new thick,
Speaker 1: machine struck coins that look magnificent. That's that's what they
Speaker 1: decided to go for with the great recoinage of It
Speaker 1: was going to be expensive, very expensive, because of how
Speaker 1: degraded the coinage was. It would take three old coins
Speaker 1: to make two new coins. The treasury would need to
Speaker 1: make up that lost silver from somewhere, and it's not
Speaker 1: like England had a ton of silver mines kicking around.
Speaker 1: Not to mention, England was also broke, like invent the
Speaker 1: national debt broke, but more on that later. In addition
Speaker 1: to fighting an expensive war with France, one of the
Speaker 1: knock on effects of the silver shortage was that people
Speaker 1: tended to pay their taxes in bad coin. This meant
Speaker 1: that the treasury was being shorted, taking in coin that
Speaker 1: didn't weigh as much as its face value said it did,
Speaker 1: and therefore wasn't worth as much. But the recoinage was
Speaker 1: the only way to stop the loss of silver from
Speaker 1: the country. Confound the coiners and clippers, William Shalloner among them,
Speaker 1: and shore up the country's fledgling financial institutions. Parliament passed
Speaker 1: the Recoinage Act on January and the melting commenced the
Speaker 1: very next day. But if anyone thought that this whole
Speaker 1: thing was going to be easy, and based on the
Speaker 1: way Newton was offered the Warden Gig, at least some
Speaker 1: people did well. Nothing considerable coined of the new and
Speaker 1: now only current stamp. Of course, such a scarcity that
Speaker 1: tumults are everyday feared. Join me next time on Newton's
Speaker 1: Law to find out exactly how Isaac Newton, that prickly
Speaker 1: genius saved England. Basically. Newton's Law is a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. It's written and hosted by Me Linda
Speaker 1: Rodriguez mccrobie. Our senior producer is Ryan Murdoch. Our producer
Speaker 1: is Emily Marinoff. Our executive producer is Jason English. Original
Speaker 1: music by Alice McCoy with editing help from Mary Do,
Speaker 1: Sound design and mixing by Jeremy Thal, Research in fact
Speaker 1: checking by me and Jocelyn Sears. Voice act being in
Speaker 1: this episode by Robbie Jack. Special thanks to Chris Barker.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Mangesh Hatikudur and Fineflex Sound Studios. Our
Speaker 1: show logo is designed by Lucy Condania. Thanks for listening,
Speaker 1: Thank you, Emily. Bye.