offences against the King's great or privy seal, and offences in
counterfeiting money, have anything to do with our present design, and
therefore we shall speak particularly of them. Not only the persons who
actually counterfeit those seals, but even the aiders and consenters to
such counterfeiting, are within the Act, and by a statute made in the
reign of Queen Mary, counterfeiting the sign manual or privy signet, is
also made high treason. By the same statute of Edward the Third, the
making of false money, or the bringing it into this realm, in deceit of
our Lord the King and his people, was also declared to be high treason,
but this Act being found insufficient, clippers being not made guilty
either of treason or of misprison of treason, it was helped in that
respect by several other Acts; but the fullest of all was the Act made
in the reign of the late King William, and rendered perpetual by a
subsequent Law made in the reign of her late Majesty [Anne], whereby it
is enacted, that whoever shall make, mend, buy, sell, or have in his
possession, any mould or press for coining, or shall convey such
instruments out of the King's Mint, or mark on the edges of any coin
current or counterfeit, or any round blanks of base metal, or colour or
gild any coin resembling the coin of this kingdom, shall suffer death as
in case of high treason. At the time when these laws were made coining
and clipping were at a prodigious height, and practised not only by mean
and indigent persons but also by some of tolerable character and rank,
insomuch that these executions were numerous for some years after
passing the said Act, which as it created some new species of high
treason, so it also made felony some other offences against the coin
which were not so, or at least were not clearly so before, viz., to
blanch copper for sale; or to mix blanch copper with silver, or
knowingly or fraudulently to buy any mixture which shall be heavier than
silver, and look, touch, and wear like gold, but be manifestly worse; or
receive, or pay any counterfeit money at a lower rate than its