In order to mark the difference it was determined to coin in future only silver gulden = 60 kreutzers, while the gold gulden was put at 75 kreutzers.
The specie authorised by this third Imperial Ordinance therefore were--
1. Gold gulden, 72 to mark, 18-1/2-carat fine, to equal 75 kreutzers.
2. Silver Reichs gulden, 9-1/2 to the mark, 14 loth 16 grs. fine, to equal 60 kreutzers.
3. Thaler, or 72 kreutzers silver gulden, to be discontinued.
4. Kreutzer, to equal 1/80 gulden, 243-1/2 to the mark, 6 loth 4 grs. fine (= 626-1/7 to the mark fine).
5. Reichs groschen, to equal 1/24 gulden, 8 loth fine, 108-1/2 to the mark; and a few other species.
The lower denominations (pfennige and heller) were minted on the basis of the mark = 11 florins 5 kreutzers.
Almost immediately, protestations were raised against this ordinance, especially by the Lower Westphalian Circle, and it remained quite inoperative. The succeeding Reichstag at Augsburg again authorised the issue of the thaler (8 to the mark, 14 loth 4 grs. fine, so that the fine mark = 10 florins 12 kreutzers).
As late as the Reichstag of Regensburg (1594) desultory attempts were made to establish a uniform system, but all practical idea of it had long ceased, and the regulation of Mint matters henceforth fell into the separate jurisdiction of the various Circles. The Lower Circles went their own way at their meetings at Cologne (1566, 1572, and 1582), as did the Upper Circles in their separate meetings in 1564 and 1572 at Nördlingen and Nürnberg.
At its meeting at Lüneburg in 1568 the Lower Saxon Circle adopted a system not far removed from that of the third Imperial Mint Ordinance of 1559. The mark of fine silver was to be coined into 10 florins 43-11/67 kreutzers, and the thaler was fixed at 24 groschen (=72 kreutzers).
Underneath this separately concerted action of the Circles, however, licence and disorder prevailed in the issue of smaller pieces of a grossly depreciated nature, before which the good heavy silver species disappeared, leaving the greatest confusion, together with a continual rise in prices or fall in the standard. The imperial proclamations of 20th January and 24th September 1571 were of no avail against this process, and by 1585 the mercantile rate had risen, thus--