"In a few months the concern turned out to be an utter failure--partly owing to mismanagement, partly to an alleged scarcity of bullion. Smyth, a person of expensive habits, who kept up an extravagant private establishment, becoming deeply involved, was forced to dispose not only of his household goods, but of the greater part of his machinery, reserving merely the dies he had brought over with him. Towards the end of May he again sought refuge in France, intending, as he said, to send his wife into England to compound for his sequestered estates.
"Chevalier, although he admits that Colonel Smyth, 'étant à Jersey, fit de la monnoie de quoi je ne dis rien,' is a firm believer in the actual existence of a mint from whence were issued coins of gold and silver of legal tender. Misled by his assertions--on all other subjects rigidly accurate--we confidently bestowed considerable time and industry in seeking to obtain specimens of the St. Georges, jacobuses, half-crowns, and shillings, so minutely described, and alleged to have been struck in Jersey. The perusal, however, of the subjoined letter dissipated the illusion--proved that the mint was a Mississippi Scheme, a South Sea Bubble on a small scale, and that the master thereof was little better than a swindling adventurer--thus accounting for the non-existence of the coinage in any numismatic collection:--
"I will tell you a tale, of which it may be you may know somewhat; if you do not, take no notice of it from me. When we were in Cornwall, Colonel Smyth (who was Sir Alexander Denton's son-in-law, and taken in that house), having obtained his liberty by J. Ashburnham's friendship upon such an exchange (one of the councillors of Ireland) as would have redeemed the best man, came to us from the king at Hereford. To me he brought a short perfunctory letter from my lord Digby, but from J. A. to my lord Culpeper his dispatch was of weight; his business, to erect a mint at Truro, which should yield the king a vast profit; Mr. Browne, J. A.'s man (who was long a prisoner with him) (_sic_); the king's dues, by a special warrant (which I saw), to be paid to Mr. Ashburnham.
"What he did in Cornwall I know not, for you perceive he was to have no relation or reference to me, which, if you had been Chancellor of the Exchequer, you would have taken unkindly. Shortly after the Prince came hither he came to us, having left Cornwall a fortnight before we did. You may imagine my lord Culpeper was forward to help him, and how he promised to set up his mint, and assured us that he had contracted with merchants at St. Malloe to bring in such a quantity of bullion as would make the revenue very considerable to the Prince. We wondered why the merchants of St. Malloe should desire to have English money coined. He gave us an answer that appeared very reasonable: that all the trade they drove with the west country for tin, fish, or wool, was driven with money; and therefore they sent over their pistoles and pieces-of-eight, in which they sustained so great a loss that their merchants had rather have this bullion coined into English money at 20 in the hundred than take the other way.
