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Saturday, the second of May, had been fixed by Parliament as the last day on which the clipped crowns, halfcrowns and shillings were 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.
However in another pocket he came across what he surmised in the dark were pennies, erroneously however, as it turned out. Those are halfcrowns, man, Corley corrected him. And so in point of fact they turned out to be. Stephen anyhow lent him one of them. Thanks, Corley answered, you're a gentleman. I'll pay you back one time. Who's that with you?
The major laid down his halfcrowns so cheerfully, with such a look of satisfaction even, that she came quite to like the man, and to hope he would be there for some time, and prove as fond of cribbage as she was. The fear of lord Gartley as to the malign influence of the major vanished entirely.
'God help you, my boy! I exclaimed. He burst out crying. 'Where did you sell it? He told me. 'Where's the money you got for it? 'That's all I have left, he answered, pulling out a small handful of shillings and halfcrowns. 'Give it me, I said. He gave it me at once.
The practice of paring down money, however, was far too lucrative to be so checked; and, about the time of the Restoration, people began to observe that a large proportion of the crowns, halfcrowns and shillings which were passing from hand to hand had undergone some slight mutilation. That was a time fruitful of experiments and inventions in all the departments of science.
The guinea had fallen to twenty-one shillings and sixpence. The bank note had risen to par. The new crowns and halfcrowns, broad, heavy and sharply milled, were ringing on all the counters. After some days of impatient expectation it was known, on the fourteenth of November, that His Majesty had landed at Margate.
The news that the Parliament and the government were determined on a reform of the currency produced an ignorant panic among the common people. Every man wished to get rid of his clipped crowns and halfcrowns. No man liked to take them. There were brawls approaching to riots in half the streets of London.
These are handy things to have. See. This is for sovereigns. This is for shillings. Sixpences, halfcrowns. And here crowns. See. He shot from it two crowns and two shillings. Three twelve, he said. I think you'll find that's right. Thank you, sir, Stephen said, gathering the money together with shy haste and putting it all in a pocket of his trousers. No thanks at all, Mr Deasy said.
He talks of them freely, and the keeper of the hunting stables is occasionally forced to write to him. And he can run down to look at his nags, and spend a few hours eating bad mutton chops, walking about the yards and paddocks, and, bleeding halfcrowns through the nose. In all this there is a delight which offers some compensation for his winter misery to our friend who hunts and doesn't like it.
An honest Quaker, who lived in one of these districts, recorded, in some notes which are still extant, the amazement with which, when he travelled southward, shopkeepers and innkeepers stared at the broad and heavy halfcrowns with which he paid his way. They asked whence he came, and where such money was to be found.
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