Note 1335 — APPENDIX.

As an incident to this fictitious valuation of the vellón coinage, counterfeiting flourished to an enormous extent, unrepressed by the severest penalties. The importation of coins manufactured abroad added to the confusion, for it was too lucrative to be prevented by even the most rigorous measures. In 1614 a chronicler states that since the recent doubling of the nominal value of the cuartos five or six millions in vellón money had been brought from England and Holland, stowed in vessels under wheat. It was exchanged for silver at 30 per cent. discount and the silver exported. The remedy devised was to bring inland twenty leagues from the coast the foreign traders engaged in the business, but this remedy was found to be worse than the disease and was abandoned (Cabrera, Relaciones, pp. 551, 553). We shall see hereafter that the Inquisition was invoked to put an end to this traffic.