A complaint by the goldsmiths’ guild in 1690 claimed that in just six months traders had sent 282,120 ounces of silver across the Channel, enough for about 10 percent of the total Mint production of the previous five years. Some of that weight might have come from candlesticks and silverware, but a parliamentary investigation confirmed that most of it had started out as the king’s coins, melted down and smuggled out.
