https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2130/2130-h/2130-h.htm
If you Ctrl + keyword "contrivances", you will find the passage I am speaking of.
I am actually not reading the Gutenberg source, but rather the Norton Anthology of English Literature. The passage in questions follows:
Suppose the councillors of some other kings are discussing various schemes for raising money to fill his treasury. One man recommends increasing the value of money when the king pays his debts and devaluing it when he collects his revenues.
An annotation to that passage reads:
Both Henry VII and (after Utopia was written) Henry VIII fiddled with the English currency in ways like those suggested here.
I have a couple of Q's. First, how did kings arbitrarily raise and lower the value of money, especially when their debtors were not stupid men, but perhaps would have understood the scheme. And second, who exactly were the king's creditors? I would guess merchants, but were their also foreign government creditors? If the latter is true, I see the problem of arbitrary inflation/deflation even graver and likely to be unsuccessful for it would be a cause of war, wouldn't it?
Thanks!
I think you mean "creditors" for "debtors" -- "creditor: A person or company to whom money is owed."
Whoever controlled the currency could order a recoinage, and debase it (any number of English kings), or could recoin with a higher precious metal content (Elizabeth I). And they could issue laws to say what the legal values of various coins were. The exhibition book Money, from the British Museum I think, had pictures of old shillings that were countermarked in Elizabeth's reign, after the recoinage, to indicate the lesser value. It also had a picture of a proclamation (I think English from about that time, but my copy of the book is packed), that showed images of coins, said where they were from, and gave the value in local money.
"In this year Philip of France made 15 deniers worth 5", somewhere in A Distant Mirror. Or England under the Tudors. Or Scotland: the pound sterling used to be 1:1 with the Scottish pound, but they ended up 1:12. During the heyday of the British Empire, "In 1920 the silver content was reduced from 92.5% to 50% because of a dramatic rise in the price of silver." http://www.coins-of-the-uk.co.uk/onesh.html
Wikipedia under Penny says "In 1527 the Tower pound of 5,400 grains was abolished and replaced by the Troy pound of 5,760 grains", which might well have affected the value of coinage.
The creditors may have understood quite well the scheming, but I can speculate it's like when modern governments manipulate their currencies with legal tender laws, fixed exchange rates, mandatory exchanges, prohibitions, and such: the government has troops and courts, so you play the game, or try to evade the controls, or go away.
As for who the creditors were, http://usna.edu/Users/history/abels/hh381/Costs%20of%20war%201200_1400.htm mentions a few exanples: "Edward I borrowed £392,000 from Riccardi of Lucca (bankrupted in 1294) Edward III borrowed £103,000 from Bardi and £71,000 from Peruzzi families of Florence. Bankrupted both in 1340s when EdIII defaulted on loans."
At least English medieval kings were almost always flat broke -- I think I read that Henry VII was the first king since Henry II to die rich. In both cases, his heir spent like a drunken sailor and died heavily in debt. I have the impression from my general reading that that was also common on the Continent. So I don't know that states would often have a lot of money to lend, though they could do things like give the soon-to-be Henry VII some troops and money for supplies.