{"id":72779,"date":"2022-04-03T03:00:29","date_gmt":"2022-04-03T07:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=72779"},"modified":"2022-04-02T11:47:02","modified_gmt":"2022-04-02T15:47:02","slug":"king-james-i-and-the-problem-of-gold-and-silver-thread-in-england","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2022\/04\/03\/king-james-i-and-the-problem-of-gold-and-silver-thread-in-england\/","title":{"rendered":"King James I and the problem of gold and silver thread in England"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the latest Age of Invention<\/em> newsletter, Anton Howes<\/a> began to research what appeared to be a minor economic issue that very quickly took over his time going deep down the gold and silver market rabbit hole:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

A hammered silver sixpence of James I dated 1603 from the first coinage with a thistle mintmark. Obverse features a right facing crowned bust with the numerals VI behind and the inscription JACOBVS*DG*ANG*SCO*FRA*ET*HIB*REX. The reverse has a shield with the royal arms and the date 1603 above. The reverse inscription is EXERGAT* DEVS*DISSIPENTVR*INIMICI.
FindID 510696 – https:\/\/finds.org.uk<\/a> via Wikimedia Commons<\/p><\/div>\n

When England’s Parliament met in 1621, it was mainly supposed to vote King James I the funds to fight a war. His daughter’s domain, the Palatinate of the Rhine, had just been invaded, and the European Protestant cause was under grave threat. As I set out two weeks ago, however, the House of Commons had seized the chance to pursue a scandal. Jealous of the Crown’s challenge to their status as local power-brokers, and hoping to embarrass the king’s favourite, the Marquess of Buckingham, MPs opened an investigation into Sir Giles Mompesson’s patent to license inns.<\/p>\n

When it came to inns, I argued that the case against Mompesson was flimsy (making me perhaps the only person to have defended him for over four hundred years). He appears to have been a trusted and able bureaucrat, the source of his downfall being his sheer effectiveness. But the flimsiness of the case against him was not enough to stop the political witch-hunt. Next on the list was a project he had administered for making gold and silver thread.<\/p>\n

It sounds obscure, and I was fully expecting to write up a short overview of a niche industry that just happened to be thrust into the limelight of 1620s politics. That was a month ago, when I first started drafting this piece. But pulling on the golden thread revealed a desperate, decade-long battle between the City and the Crown, over who would get to control the financial stability of the realm. I’m sorry for the delay in publishing it, but I hope I’ve made it worth the wait.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the latest Age of Invention newsletter, Anton Howes began to research what appeared to be a minor economic issue that very quickly took over his time going deep down the gold and silver market rabbit hole: When England’s Parliament met in 1621, it was mainly supposed to vote King James I the funds to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,25,62,84,7],"tags":[570,350,563,469,222,380],"class_list":["post-72779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-economics","category-europe","category-government","category-history","tag-england","tag-london","tag-money","tag-monopolies","tag-netherlands","tag-patents"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-iVR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72779"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72781,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72779\/revisions\/72781"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}