The price of the necessaries of life, of shoes, of ale, of oatmeal, rose fast.

The bit of metal called a shilling the labourer found would not go so far as sixpence.

One day Tonson sends forty brass shillings to Dryden, to say nothing of clipped money.

The great poet sends them all back and demands in their place good guineas.

"I expect," he says, "good silver, not such as I had formerly." Meanwhile, at every session of the Old Bailey the most terrible example of coiners and clippers was made.