Given at Our Castle at Windsor, the Eighteenth Day of June, 1704. In the Third Year of Our Reign.
London, Printed by Charles Bill, and the Executrix of Thomas Newcomb, deceas'd; Printers to the Queens most Excellent Majesty. 1704.
_1 p. folio. Copies in Antiq., B. M., Crawf., Dalk., P. C., P. R. O., and in N. Y. Historical Society. Entered in Privy Council Register, Anne, vol. 2, p. 132. Printed in "London Gazette," June 22, 1704; also in Boston News-Letter, Dec. 11, 1704._
[1] The attention of the Council of Trade had been frequently called to the disorder in the currency in the Plantations (see _Cal. State Papers, Colonial, 1700_, pp. 108, 393; and Chalmers' _History of Currency in the British Colonies_, pp. 11-15). On November 18, 1703, the Privy Council referred to the Lord Treasurer a representation from the Board of Trade for settling the rates of foreign coins in America, upon which the Lord Treasurer, May 18, 1704, submitted a report from the Officers of the Mint with a table of the weights and values of foreign coins then current in the Plantations (_Acts of Privy Council_, ii, 452). The proclamation which followed was little observed, however, and after several reports on the subject had been rendered, an Act of Parliament was passed April 1, 1708, entitled "An Act for ascertaining the Rates of Foreign Coins in Her Majesty's Plantations in America." (_Statutes of the Realm_, viii, 792. See also _Lords Journals_, xviii, 486, 566; _Commons Journals_, xv, 635; _Acts of Privy Council_, ii, 452). For the action of Massachusetts upon this proclamation, see _Acts and Resolves of the Province of Massachusetts Bay_, viii, 471.