The expense incurred by this war lay heavy upon her narrow revenues; and her ministers, taking advantage of her disposition to frugality, proposed to her an expedient of saving, which, though she at first disapproved of it, she was at last induced to embrace.

It was represented to her, that the great sums of money remitted to Ireland for the pay of the English forces, came, by the necessary course of circulation, into the hands of the rebels, and enabled them to buy abroad all necessary supplies of arms and ammunition, which, from the extreme poverty of that kingdom and its want of every useful commodity, they could not otherwise find means to purchase.

It was therefore recommended to her, that she should pay her forces in base money; and it was asserted that, besides the great saving to the revenue, this species of coin could never be exported with advantage, and would not pass in any foreign market.

Some of her wiser counsellors maintained, that if the pay of the soldiers were raised in proportion, the Irish rebels would necessarily reap the same benefit from the base money, which would always be taken at a rate suitable to its value; if the pay were not raised, there would be danger of a mutiny among the troops, who, whatever names might be affixed to the pieces of metal, would soon find from experience that they were defrauded in their income.[*] But Elizabeth, though she justly valued herself on fixing the standard of the English coin, much debased by her predecessors, and had innovated very little in that delicate article, was seduced by the specious arguments employed by the treasurer on this occasion; and she coined a great quantity of base money, which he made use of in the pay of her forces in Ireland.[**] * Camden, p.

643 ** Rymer, tom, xvi.p.