FN 692 London Gazette, May 4. 1696

FN 693 Ibid.  March 12. 16. 1696; Monthly Mercury for March, 1696.

FN 694 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.

FN 695 L’Hermitage, May 5/15 1696; London 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.”

FN 696 London Newsletter, May 21. 1696; Old Postmaster, June 25.; L’Hermitage, May 19/29.

FN 697 Haynes’s Brief Memoirs, Lansdowne MSS. 801.

FN 698 See the petition from Birmingham in the Commons’ Journals,
Nov. 12. 1696; and the petition from Leicester, Nov. 21

FN 699 “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.”

FN 700 L’Hermitage, May 22/June 1; See a Letter of Dryden to Tonson, which Malone, with great probability, supposes to have been written at this time.

FN 701 L’Hermitage to the States General May 8/18.; Paris Gazette, June 2/12.; Trial and Condemnation of the Land Bank at Exeter Change for murdering the Bank of England at Grocers’ Hall, 1696.  The Will and the Epitaph will be found in the Trial.

FN 702 L’Hermitage, June 12/22. 1696.

FN 703 On this subject see the Short History of the Last Parliament, 1699; Narcissus Luttrell’s Diary; the newspapers of 1696 passim, and the letters of L’Hermitage passim.  See also the petition of the Clothiers of Gloucester in the Commons’ Journal, Nov. 27. 1696.  Oldmixon, who had been himself a sufferer, writes on this subject with even more than his usual acrimony.

FN 704 See L’Hermitage, June 12/22, June 23/July, 3 June 30/July 10, Aug 1/11 Aug 28/Sept 7 1696.  The Postman of August 15. mentions the great benefit derived from the Exchequer Bills.  The Pegasus of Aug. 24. says:  “The Exchequer Bills do more and more obtain with the public; and ’tis no wonder.”  The Pegasus of Aug. 28. says:  “They pass as money from hand to hand; ’tis observed that such as cry them down are ill affected to the government.”  “They are found by experience,” says the Postman of the seventh of May following, “to be of extraordinary use to the merchants and traders of the City of London, and all other parts of the kingdom.”  I will give one specimen of the unmetrical and almost unintelligible doggrel which the Jacobite poets published on this subject:—­

“Pray, Sir, did you hear of the late proclamation,
Of sending paper for payment quite thro’ the nation? 
Yes, Sir, I have:  they’re your Montague’s notes,
Tinctured and coloured by your Parliament votes. 
But ’tis plain on the people to be but a toast,
They come by the carrier and go by the post.”