liam, whose chief object was to procure money for the service of the year, was little inclined to find fault with any source from which two millions and a half could be obtained. Sunderland, who generally exerted his influence in favour of the Whig leaders, failed them on this occasion. The Whig country gentlemen were delighted by the prospect of being able to repair their stables, replenish their cellars, and give portions to their daughters. It was impossible to contend against such a combination of force. A bill was passed which authorised the government to borrow two million five hundred and sixty four thousand pounds at seven per cent. A fund, arising chiefly from a new tax on salt, was set apart for the payment of the interest. If, before the first of August, the subscription for one half of this loan should have been filled, and if one half of the sum subscribed should have been paid into the Exchequer, the subscribers were to become a corporate body, under the name of the National Land Bank. As this bank was expressly intended to accommodate country gentlemen, it was strictly interdicted from lending money on any private security other than a mortgage of land, and was bound to lend on mortgage at least half a million annually. The interest on this half million was not to exceed three and a half per cent, if the payments were quarterly, or four per cent, if the payments were half yearly. At that time the market rate of interest on the best mortgages was full six per cent. The shrewd observers at the Dutch Embassy therefore thought that the subscription would never be half filled up; and it seems strange that any sane person should have thought otherwise.*

It was vain however to reason against the gene

The Act is 7 & 8 Will. 3. c. 31 Its history may be traced in the Journals.

ral infatuation. The Tories exultingly predicted that the Bank of Robert Harley would completely eclipse the Bank of Charles Montague. The bill passed both Houses. On the twenty-seventh of April it received the royal assent; and the Parliament was immediately afterwards prorogued.

Military operations in the Netherlands.

CHAPTER XXII

On the seventh of May 1696, William landed in Holland.* Thence he proceeded to Flanders, and took the command of the allied forces, which were collected in the neighbourhood of Ghent. Villeroy and Boufflers were already in the field. All Europe waited impatiently for great news from the Netherlands, but waited in vain. No aggressive movement was made. The object of the generals on both sides was to keep their troops from dying of hunger; and it was an object by no means easily attained. The treasuries both of France and England were empty. Lewis had, during the winter, created with great difficulty and expense a gigantic magazine at Givet on the frontier of his kingdom. The buildings were commodious and of vast extent. The quantity of provender laid up in them for horses was immense. The number of rations for men was commonly estimated at from three to four millions But early in the spring Athlone and Cohorn had, by a bold and dexterous move, surprised Givet, and had utterly destroyed both storehouses and stores.† France, already fainting from exhaustion, was in no condition to repair such a loss. Sieges such as those of Mons and Namur were operations too costly for her means. The business of her army now was, not to conquer, but to subsist.

The army of William was reduced to straits not less

* London Gazette, May 4. Monthly Mercury for March,

painful. The material wealth of England, indeed, had not been very seriously impaired by the drain which the war had caused: but she was suffering severely from the defective state of that instrument by which her material wealth was distributed.

land.

Saturday, the second of May, had been fixed by Parliament as the last day on which the Commercial clipped crowns, halfcrowns and shillings crisis in Eugwere to be received by tale in payment of taxes.* The Exchequer was besieged from dawn till midnight by an immense multitude. It was necessary to call in the guards for the purpose of keeping order. On the following Monday began a cruel agony of a few months, which was destined to be succeeded by many years of almost unbroken prosperity.†

Most of the old silver had vanished. The new silver had scarcely made its appearance. Several millions sterling, in ingots and hammered coin, were lying in the vaults of the Exchequer; and the milled money as yet came forth very slowly from the Mint.‡ Alarmists predicted that the wealthiest and most enlightened kingdom in Europe would be reduced to the state of those barbarous societies in which a mat is bought with a hatchet, and a pair of mocassins with a piece of venison.

There were, indeed, some hammered pieces which had escaped mutilation; and sixpences not clipped within the innermost ring were still current. This old money and the new money together made up a scanty stock of silver, which, with the help of gold, was to

*The Act provided that the clipped money must be brought in before the fourth of May. As the third was a Sunday, the second was practically the last day.

L'Hermitage, May. 1696; Londor. Newsletter, May 4, May 6. In the Newsletter the fourth

of May is mentioned as "the day so much taken notice of for the universal concern people had in it."

London Newsletter, May 21. 1696; Old Postmaster, June 25. L'Hermitage, May

carry the nation through the summer and autumn. The manufacturers generally contrived, though with extreme difficulty, to pay their workmen in coin.† The upper classes seem to have lived to a great extent on credit. Even an opulent man seldom had the means of discharging the weekly bills of his baker and butcher. A promissory note, however, subscribed by such a man, was readily taken in the district where his means and character were well known. The notes of the wealthy moneychangers of Lombard Street circulated widely.§ The paper of the Bank of England did much service, and would have done more, but for the unhappy error into which the Parliament had recently been led by Harley and Foley. The confidence which the public had felt in that powerful and opulent Company had been shaken by the Act which established the Land Bank. It might well be doubted whether there would be room for the two rival institutions; and of the two, the younger seemed to be the favourite of the government and of the legislature. The price of the stock of the Bank of England had gone rapidly down from a hundred and ten to eighty three. Meanwhile the goldsmiths, who had from the first been hostile to that great corporation, were plotting against it. They collected its paper from every quarter; and on the fourth of May, when the Exchequer had just swallowed up most of the old money, and when scarcely any of the new money had been issued, they flocked to Grocers'

* Haynes's Brief Memoirs, Lansdowne MSS. 801.

See the petition from Birmingham in the Commons' Journals, Nov. 12. 1696; and the petition from Leicester, Nov. 21.

"Money exceeding scarce, so that none was paid or received: but all was on trust."- Evelyn, May 13. And again, on June 11.:

"Want of current money to carry on the smallest concerns, even for daily provisions in the markets."

June 1.

§ L'Hermitage, May 22. See a Letter of Dryden to Tonson, which Malone, with great probability, supposes to have been written at this time.