It is the special boast and glory of the English currency that for more than a thousand years it has maintained its original weight and purity in a far higher degree than any of its neighbours. In the whole course of our history only one severe shock has been given to the credit of the English coinage, the one with which this paper deals. Save in this one single case, the currency has been spared by even the worst, the weakest, and the most unfortunate of our rulers. In the clash of the Norman Conquest, in the evil days of King John, in the long thriftless administration of Henry III., in the anarchy of the Wars of the Roses, in the sharpest stress of the Great Rebellion, no ruler of England ever laid hands on the coin of the realm to alloy its purity or cut down its size. It is true that in the attrition of the ages the first of English coins, the venerable silver penny, has sunk to about one-third of its original weight. Offa, its first creator, struck it to the standard of 22 grains; Queen Victoria's Maundy penny of to-day weighs 7¼ grains. But this shrinkage has been due not to deliberate dishonesty in any series of kings or ministers, but to the variations of the ratio between gold and silver in the last five centuries, since the day when Edward III. first added gold money to the currency of the realm.