neighbouring streets, lately erected on what used to be called St. James's Fields.[1] Both these districts had been till now included in the parish of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Sir William Petty, we may observe, in his "Political Arithmetic," published in 1687, estimates the population of London at 696,000. He founds his calculation on the number of burials within the bills of mortality, the annual average of which he makes to be 23,212; and on the assumption that one person in every thirty died in the course of the year. Ten years later, Gregory King, calculating from the number of houses as ascertained from the hearth-money returns, made the population of London to amount only to about 530,000.[2] This estimate is probably as much too low as that of Petty may be too high.
The money of the Commonwealth was all called in after the Restoration, and a new gold and silver coinage immediately struck, similar to that of the preceding reign. In this first coinage of Charles II. the pieces were formed by the ancient method of hammering; the minters who had been employed in coining Cromwell's milled money having, it is supposed, withdrawn or concealed themselves, in apprehension of punishment, and probably also carried their machinery away with them. Milled money, however, was again coined in 1662, and of a sort superior to any that had as yet been produced, having graining or letters upon the rim, an improvement which had not appeared upon the milled money either of Queen Elizabeth or of Charles I. The new gold coin called the Guinea was first struck in 1662, without graining on the rim, and with graining in 1664. It was so called as being made of gold brought from Guinea by the African Company, who, as an encouragement to them to bring over gold to
- ↑ In the common editions of the Statutes these acts are included among the public acts, and numbered 1 Jac. II. c. 20 and 22: in the Record Commission edition their titles only are given in the list of Private Acts.
- ↑ Political Observations and Conclusions, published at the end of the fourth edition of Chalmers's Estimate of the Comparative Strength of Great Britain, 8vo. Lon. 1804.
