The Monetary Movements of 1600–1621 in Holland and Germany

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Abstract
The particular phenomena of the crisis of 1621 in England have been examined in another connection' by the aid afforded in the State Papers, Domestic and Foreign, at the Record Office. That the movement—one, namely, of an unprecedented change in the relative values of the precious metals towards the close of the sixteenth century, bringing with it disturbance in the monetary standards and economic and social life of the chief States of Europe—was not restricted to England is demonstrable, and might safely be presumed. In the case of those other States, however, the nature of the evidence available differs from that revealed in such welcome fulness by the English State Papers. For Holland the chief authority is the huge Plakkaat book, a collection which takes the place of our Statutes of the Realm plus (our one great desideratum yet) a book of proclamations of the King in Council. In the case of Germany the want of a central rule rendered impossible anything like a statute or an imperial proclamation of sufficient authority to bind the various constituent parts of the empire. To face the monetary evils which beset her to even a greater and more pernicious degree than they did England, Germany was reduced to the less effectual system of local mint unions between the circles or contiguous princes.

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