ABSTRACT
Income falling, expenditure rising—that was the situation which Elizabeth bequeathed to her successor, James I. The price-level stood at about 275 to 1542’s 100. There was no possibility of reducing prices by any substantial amount, but at least it should have been the object of James’s policy to have prevented a further increase in them. In this he failed. In Elizabeth’s reign a high proportion of the silver that had come into the country had been used for domestic and not for monetary purposes. But the effect of her reduction of the silver content of the shilling in 1601 was, of course, to increase the sale price of silver. The result was that for the next ten years the owners of plate were in a steady stream bringing their plate to the Mint and having it turned into coin. Clearly James should have raised the Mint charges so high as to have made it unprofitable for silver to be brought in. He did not do so. The result was that between 1601 and 1611 there was a great increase of money in circulation, a gross inflation, and consequent rise of prices to between 400 and 500.
