hat great property had, in a troubled time, been bestowed by
the Commons of England on their victorious general Fairfax, and had been
part of the dower which Fairfax's daughter had brought to the brilliant
and dissolute Buckingham. Thither Buckingham, having wasted in mad
intemperance, sensual and intellectual, all the choicest bounties of
nature and of fortune, had carried the feeble ruins of his fine person
and of his fine mind; and there he had closed his chequered life under
that humble roof and on that coarse pallet which the great satirist
of the succeeding generation described in immortal verse. The spacious
domain passed to a new race; and in a few years a palace more splendid
and costly than had ever been inhabited by the magnificent Villiers rose
amidst the beautiful woods and waters which had been his, and was called
by the once humble name of Duncombe.

Since the Revolution the state of the currency had been repeatedly
discussed in Parliament. In 1689 a committee of the Commons had been
appointed to investigate the subject, but had made no report. In 1690
another committee had reported that immense quantities of silver were
carried out of the country by Jews, who, it was said, would do any thing
for profit. Schemes were formed for encouraging the importation and
discouraging the exportation of the precious metals. One foolish bill
after another was brought in and dropped. At length, in the beginning of
the year 1695, the question assumed so serious an aspect that the Houses
applied themselves to it in earnest. The only practical result of their
deliberations, however, was a new penal law which, it was hoped, would
prevent the clipping of the hammered coin and the melting and exporting
of the milled coin. It was enacted that every person who informed
against a clipper should be entitled to a reward of forty pounds, that
every clipper who informed against two clippers should be entitled to a
pardon, and that whoever should be found in possession of silver filings
or parings should be burned in the cheek with a redhot iron. Certain
officers were empowered to search for bullion. If bullion were found in
a house or on board of a ship, the burden of proving that it had never
been part of the money of the realm was thrown on the owner. If he
failed in making out a satisfactory history of every ingot he was
liable to severe penalties. This Act was, as might have been expected,
altogether ineffective. During the follo