THE COIN SHILLING OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY.

SILVER

I.

ILVER plate was first rated in 1640, at five shillings per ounce sterling, .925 fine.1 The English mint price for silver, after 1601, was 5s. 2d. per ounce, but it seems to have been believed in Massachusetts that it was still five shillings. Strange as this error appears, it is supported by an incidental statement of Hutchinson2 that he owned several shillings of the reign of Charles I, which weighed four pennyweights each. No mention of any such coins occurs in Ruding, but he says that, in 1631, "Many of [the money weights] which were in common use (although they were marked with the King's ensign) were too heavy, and others too light, so that men bought and received by one weight, and sold and delivered by another."3

From the first year of the settlement rates were set at which commodities could be tendered in payment of taxes. In the following years the system of barter rates was extended to private transactions, so that there was a multiple currency, out of which that one thing was chosen, and became the money of account, which enabled a debtor to discharge his obligation with the least sacrifice. Hence arose a barter shilling, by the side of which was placed, by the law of 1640, a coin shilling, or bullion shilling of silver, which contained 96/88.8 grains, while a shilling sterling was only 92.901/85.934 grains.

In 1642 the Court ordered that ducatoons of three gilders should be current at six shillings, rix dollars of two and a half gilders and pieces of eight at five shillings. What ducatoons were, in 1642, we do not know. Sir Isaac Newton found them, in 1703, if of Holland, worth 65.59 pence sterling, .937.5 fine; if of Flanders, 66.15 pence sterling, .943.75 fine. The three gilder

1 Col. Rec., 294. 2 Bost. Evg. Post, Jan. 14, 1762.

3 1 Ruding, 386.

4 The first number is the gross weight, the second, the fine contents.

5 See the Discourse Concerning the Currencies of the British Plantations, 1740, in the Overstone Tracts: reprint edited by C. J. Bullock, 1897, who attributes it to Douglass.

23 Gent. Mag., 6.

pieces of Holland are not called ducatoons by him. They were worth 62.46 pence sterling, .916.66 fine. There was a great number and variety of rix dollars. The one referred to in the Massachusetts law was probably the "Patagon leg dollar or rix dollar of Holland, or piece of 50 styvers" of Sir Isaac Newton's table. This was worth, in 1703, 52.28 pence sterling. It was then only .866.66 fine. If it had been .925 fine it would have been worth 4s. 7d. 2.8f. A rix dollar current in London, in 1626, was worth, by weight and assay, 4s. 7d. 2f., but was current at two pence less, being mint charge and broker's commission, and the piece of eight, worth by mint test 4s. 6d. If., was current there at two pence less, for the same reason.1 Of the three coins mentioned, the piece of eight was by far the most important for Massachusetts, being obtained already by trade with pirates and with Jamaica. It was also overrated relatively to the other two in the law of 1642, and therefore displaced them. Cotton found it to be 420 grains in weight, but of varying fineness, .916.66 to .925. This coin being rated at five shillings, the shilling of Masachusetts was reduced to 84/77-7 grains. In fact, however, all the pieces of eight in circulation were more or less clipped and, although Cotton found them up to sterling standard in 1626, others disputed it then, and later in the 17th century they fell below it.2

The presence of barter currency and of wampum by the side of silver, forced a constant exportation of the latter, or the clipping of such coins as remained. The barter currency was called "pay" or "country pay," which meant that it was the money of account. "Country pay became the general measure throughout the government." It was 30 or 40 per cent. below sterling in 1642.3 This barter shilling then would correspond to a silver shilling of 65.03/60.15 or 55.74/51.55. It constantly and steadily depreciated. "Silver in New England," said Cotton Mather, "is like the water of a swift running river; always coming and as fast going away.' 994 The accepted explanation of this phenomenon was the balance of trade and the colonial 1 Cotton, Posthuma, 296.

Sumner, The Spanish Dollar, Hist. Rev. July, 1898.

3 Hutchinson, l. c.

4 Trumbull in Am. Antiq. Soc., 1884, 275

relation. The facts just stated, however, show that a 122 pennyweight dollar could barely remain in circulation. "By the middle of the 17th century, clipping was rampant in the West Indies, and light Spanish silver coins became the general standard of value in the British possessions of the new world. As far as can be learned, Jamaica and New England took the lead in these proceedings." The current piece of eight was down to 336 grains.1 Inasmuch, however, as the barter shilling was constantly depreciating, and the silver coins were being clipped to keep pace with it, this "standard of value" hardly deserved the name. While the barter currency was the money of account, the money of ultimate reference for it was uncertain, depreciating, and indefinable. It was of foreign manufacture. It was not made with accuracy or regularity. It was rated in a traditional English denomination to which it did not fit. It was not rated at its sterling value, but arbitrarily, so that the definition of a colonial shilling was derived, not from a sterling shilling, but from it, and the relation to sterling was a deduction. It was being clipped all the time.

The inconveniences of this complicated set of relations led to the project of establishing a mint at Boston. Probably, however, the hope of preventing exportation by recoining was the more immediate motive. This hope was vain. Recoinage

could have no effect on the forces which caused exportation, but it could render the English colonists independent of the errors of the Spanish mints. In an address of Massachusetts to the King, 1684, a passage was inserted to apologize for the establishment of the mint, which passage was stricken out on final revision. The excuses alleged were that they had no exports but bulky corn and fish, “and therefor, for some years, paper bills passed for payment of debts, which are very subject to be lost, rent, or counterfeit, and other inconveniences. There comes in a considerable quantity of light base Spanish money, whereby many people were cozened, and the Colony in danger of being undone thereby, which put us upon the project of melting it down and stamping such pieces as aforesaid to pass in payment of debts amongst ourselves." The Act for the

1 Chalmers, Colonial Currencies, 8.

mint, as first drawn, also contained a preamble which was omitted on revision: "Forasmuch as the new order about money is not well resented by the people, and full of difficulties, and unlikely to take effect, in regard no persons are found willing to try and stamp the same." The reference here is to some order about money which is not in the record. It appears to mean that they intended at first to reduce the coins to bars. which should be stamped. The first ordinance for the mint. provided that the coins should be flat and square.2

A Committee of the General Court was appointed, in 1652, to appoint the mint house." They reported that it should be 16 feet square and 10 feet high; that the Colony should provide the plant, that a man should be impressed to build the house, and that he should be authorized to impress help. In order to prevent washing and clipping, the law provided that each coin should have a double ring and "Massachusetts" on the margin, and a tree in the center, on one side, and New England and the year of Our Lord, on the other, a picture being drawn on the margin of the page to elucidate the enactment. The provisions of the mint law are confused and contradictory, in fact they are unintelligible without information of a supplementary agreement between the Committee and Hull, the mint-master, which is not incorporated in the law.

Crosby

1 Hull's Diary, 3 Am. Antiq. Soc., 282; 1 Hutchinson, 164. Atkins (Coins of British Possessions) says that silver " planchets" were in circulation before 1651, which bore on one side "N. E." and on the other XII, for twelve pence. They are depicted in Crosby. Stickney (2 Essex Inst., 99) says: "Shillings have lately appeared dated 1650; these, if not the work of modern artists, must*** have been patterns struck in England. They are of superior workmanship to those adopted in 1652, and might have been rejected on account of the expense attending their execution. That experiments were made with a view to copper coinage is evident, as I have one of Massachusetts, dated 1652, of pure copper, presenting no appearance of being a counterfeit, and is the only one that I ever saw." [?]

33 Am. Antiq. Soc., 286.

4 IV. 1. Col. Rec., 104. An attempt has been made (I. 3 Hist. Mag., 197) to show that the two rings and the tree were occult symbols, based on Old Testament texts, the significance of which to Puritans was: "God protecting New England," and "Independence."

5 It is approved but not rehearsed, IV. 1. Col. Rec., 118.

6 Early Coins of America, 34.

gives a heliotype reproduction of the manuscript law. It is a slovenly scrawl, with erasures, superposed corrections, interlineations, and amendments, resulting in one case in an illegible blur at a material point. The mint-master was "for value to stamp three [erased and two substituted] pence in a shilling of lesser value than the present English coin." The upper House at first allowed for mint charge 18 pence in 20 shillings; this the Deputies reduced to one shilling, and so the law provided, as it was passed. It further provided that for silver brought in by anyone "the mint-master shall deliver him the like weight in current money, viz: every shilling to weigh three penny troy weight and lesser pieces proportionably, deducting allowance for coinage as before expressed." It was strictly enjoined that the coins should be of sterling alloy.

It is impossible to reconcile these prescriptions with each other. According to the usual slipshod colonial method of doing business, no fair copy having been made, inconsistencies which resulted from amendments stand in the document unadjusted. Analysis and comparison lead to the following conclusions. They supposed, as we have seen above, that the English mint price for silver was five shillings per ounce; i. e. 96 grains sterling for a shilling. They meant to make a shilling equal to nine pence sterling on that supposition, i. e. 72 grains or 3 pennyweights. Hull and his partner, Sanderson, would not agree to the reduced allowance for mint charge. The Committee consented to raise it to 15 pence per 20 shillings, and to allow one penny per oz. for wastage. Inasmuch as 20 of the proposed shillings would weigh just 3 ounces, this carried the total mint allowance up to 18 pence per 20 shillings again. The Committee consented to this very reluctantly, and until the next session only, expressing the hope that the mint-master would find that he could afford to take less. He was to reduce all silver to standard, and to coin it, at the uniform price agreed on, for the Committee urge that "there is likelihood of several kinds of work in which he is to be employed where there is no refining and so less labor."

Specimens of the coins which have been tested weighed 61, 65, 67, 70, and 72 grains. An assay at the mint of the United