Without a doubt, one of the greatest mysteries of modern
Spanish numismatics is the absence of the assayer's mark on all
of the coins that King Philip II struck from his silver ingots
(1) at his own private water powered mill mint in Segovia, Spain.
We are inspired to publish this article now, since 1998 is the
four-hundredth anniversary of the death of King Philip II. In
addition, it makes a curious anecdote to the GLOSSARY OF
MINTMASTERS AND ASSAYERS, recently published by Josep
Pellicer i Bru (2). As we will see, it is very probable that the
assayer mark was purposefully left off of the coins because
Philip II was being "prudent" (3) in what appears to
have been a monetary experiment.
The inclusion of the assayer's mark on all Spanish coinage,
obligatory since 1497 (4) was a direct response for the need to
identify the individual who prepared the alloy, whom, for his
part, guaranteed that the fineness corresponded to the officially
required 11 dineros and 4 grains, in the case of silver coins.
The absence of this mark on an entire series of silver coins
struck from 1586 through 1598 signals to us a probable anomalous
situation with respects to the fineness of these coins; a topic
which has always been worthy of numismatic study.
After lengthy investigations of original sources (5) it seems
strange that we found not a single document which refers directly
to the absence of the assayer mark. Not a single order, decree,
or even the slightest reference to the omission of a symbol
which, during this period, traditionally appeared on all Spanish
coins. On the other hand, according to the official
"instructions" for the minting of coins at King Philip
II's private Mint in Segovia, all coins were to be struck to the
same weight, fineness and design standards employed at all the
other Spanish mints. Nor were we able to find a single document
which ordered the placement of this missing symbol on coins from
this Mint during the reign of King Phillip III, when this
occurred. But even stranger, we found not a single document
written by a third party in which the absence of the assayer mark
is directly questioned (6), as if there had been a subsequent
search and official destruction of any documented reference to
this matter. One thing for sure, we can be certain that the
absence of this symbol did not pass unobserved; not by the
general public, and certainly not by the assayers at the other
mints, gold and silver merchants, silversmiths, and other
professionals who worked in this field.
We did, however, find a few indirect references and
indications in documents not specifically related with this
affair which enable us to probe this mystery in order to arrive
at an explanation.
It's worth noting that no numismatic investigator has ever
attempted to explain the missing assayer mark up until now. Casto
Maria del Rivero, in his 1915 doctoral thesis on the Segovia Mint
simply stated that "the absence of the assayer mark
deprives us of the interest in discovering the name of the
assayer which corresponds to the symbol (7)." And
Pellicer, in his recent study, correctly identifies the names of
the two assayers who worked in the Mint at that time, Juan de
Morales (8) and Joaquin Lingahel (9), but does not attempt to
explain why their symbol is missing from the coins.
In order to better comprehend the circumstances which surround
this affair, a brief analysis is necessary of the historical
context in which they occur, along with some considerations as to
the personality of King Philip II.
To begin with, we should remember that if one thing kept
Philip II awake at night, it was where he was going to obtain
more money; a problem which became an obsession after the state
bankruptcy in 1575. Geoffrey Parker (10), in his analysis of the
character of the "Prudent King," draws our attention to
his attraction to the art of alchemy, for the obvious reason that
the ability to transform common metals into gold or silver would
immediately resolve his economic dilemma. Parker also reminds us
of "the Prudent King's known fondness for secrets and
dissimulation tactics," which is another factor which
comes into play in our attempt to discover what happened to the
assayer mark on his coins. As Parker says, "it's in
these cases when we need to consider the psychology of the King,
as the more we know about the way he thought and made decisions,
the greater our chances will be in filling in the voids left by
the absence of documents," adding that "as a
rational being, the King had good reasons for all his
actions."
Owing to his financial difficulties and the above mentioned
considerations, it is perfectly rational for us to theorize that
the King may have contemplated lowering the fineness of his coins
as a method to create more money, as his successors, Charles III
and Charles IV (11) would later do in the utmost of secrecy (12)
(although these kings did not tamper with the assayer mark). We
have previously discovered that the "Prudent King" sent
some of his silver ingots in 1582 to be minted at the Lisbon
Mint, showing great interest in the benefits which this yielded
him since the official fineness for Portuguese coins was only 11
dineros, instead of the 11 dineros and 4 grains required in Spain
(13).
As a backdrop to this affair, we remember that a general
confusion reigned during this period as to the correct scientific
method for performing assays; a pretext under which the gold and
silver merchants of Seville protected themselves in order to
commit widespread fraud at nearly all the Spanish mints over a
long period of time. The famous assayer, Juan de Arfe, tells us
how this confusion came about "because the gold and
silver merchants and assayers assumed a mistaken correlation
between the silver weight of the marco and the weights used for
gold and the castellano (14)." Arfe continues by
referring to certain lawsuits during 1585 and 1586 pertaining to
the fineness of practically all the coins struck at the Spanish
mints, which later resulted in a massive trial against the
merchants and the assayers (15), and the subsequent passing of a
new and definitive legislation on the standards and methods of
performing assays (16).
In the above mentioned trial, several gold and silver
merchants confessed to having struck debased coinage over a
period of more than 20 years, basing their actions on the
supposed confusion regarding the technical methods of performing
assays. Nevertheless, the authorities judged that the merchants
always knew exactly what the fineness of the coinage they
produced really was, even if only by "visually observing
the coins, which is the truest test," one of them
arguing that "it seems to me they cannot plead ignorance
according to what they say, since this is their trade and
profession, in which they have gained all their wealth and
fortune by taking for themselves the silver and gold which should
have been in the coins, because they themselves declare it is
their knowledge and evidence to know what they earn or loose and
if the assayers were performing well their duties, or not
(17)."
It shouldn't surprise us if the interest that King Philip
showed for discovering the tricks of the gold and silver
merchants and resolving at the same time the technical questions
surrounding the proper method of performing assays, lead him to
conduct a few practical experiments. In such a case, the ideal
laboratory would have been his new Royal Mill Mint in Segovia,
which was his own private coining factory, as well as the closest
mint to his palaces in Madrid and the Escorial. Along these
lines, we should remember that in the first
"instruction" which the King gave for the striking of
his own silver ingots at the Segovia Mint, he explicitly stated
that "although these coins are for test or experimental
purposes, they are later to be distributed and spent
(18)."
The circumstances surrounding this affair direct us to one
basic question: Did Philip II do away with the assayers mark on
these coins because he could not truthfully guarantee their
fineness? It's obvious that a decision to delete such an
important symbol from these coins could only have been made by
the King himself, and according to the specimens known today, it
seems that this decision was made before the first piece was
struck at the new Mint.
Was the "Prudent King," also devoutly religious, by
omitting the assayer mark, washing his hands of any act which may
have been questionable by the only authority higher than him:
God? Without a doubt, it would have been much less noticeable if
he had not tampered with such a traditional symbol on the
coinage, as his successors later did in similar cases.
In order to probe deeper into this affair, we'll investigate
the assayer of the new Mint, Juan de Morales. In 1583, Morales,
then assayer of the mint in Burgos, sent a petition to the King
in which he insisted he had discovered a "secret"
as to the fineness of silver coinage and its relation to the
price of gold, with which, according to him, Spain could
circumvent the unequal parity of it's coinage with those of other
European nations, and thus thwart the foreigners who extracted
coins from Spain to melt them down at a profit; a "secret"
which would yield "a great advantage to the Royal
Treasury (19)." Nevertheless, the experts judged that
Morales hadn't discovered anything new, and that he had simply
implied raising the value of the coinage or lowering its weight
or fineness.
Shortly thereafter, in 1585, we find Morales in Madrid
performing a special assay for the King. We don't know the nature
of this assay but it appears to have been an experiment or
demonstration which lasted 100 days, including 10 days round trip
from Burgos to Madrid (20). Apparently, the King was satisfied
with Morales because on the first of February, 1586, he was sent
a letter with orders to return to Madrid for a special task, but
without a hint of what that task would be. The letter, folded and
sealed, had the following address on its outer side: "The
very magnificent Mister Juan de Morales, assayer of the Mint of
the city of Burgos."
"I have written to Mister Antonio that he is to give
your mercy, license and order, that later, as soon as able, you
leave where you are and come to where I await your mercy. And it
is convenient that you give speed, for the effect which you are
called will be made known to you when you cometh... Your mercy is
advised to bring what is necessary to perform an assay, as it
will be ordered of you (21)."
There is always an air of mystery surrounding the actions of
Morales, but we know that he arrived in Madrid on February 9th,
1586, and that he was still there on the 21st, because he
requested a signed testimony of the fact before a public scribe.
Although we have not been able to locate the commission or
instruction which Morales himself received for his duties in the
Segovia Mill Mint, we know that on February 23, he was assigned
there because this is clear in the instruction which Juan
Racionero received on that date:
"...later upon receiving this my order, and the other
dispaches that with it will be given to you, without delay, you
are to leave and go the said city of Segovia, taking with you
Juan de Morales, deputy assayer of the mint of the city of
Burgos, whom we have ordered to come to the city of Madrid for
this reason... (22)."
Juan Racionero was a metals expert who had worked in the
mercury mines in the Province of Peru. King Philip II put him in
charge of the new Segovia Mill Mint "to ascertain its
usefulness and benefit... confiding that you will deal with this
with your utmost care, diligence and truthfulness, owing to the
experience that you have in these matters (23)." This
"Instruction of the King, His Majesty, to work the
silver," directed to Racionero, is of utmost interest
to us because of the subtle alterations it authorizes in the
procedure of performing the assay, different from that used in
the other Spanish mints.
Later on, the accountant general found serious flaws in
Racionero's ledgers, apparently originating in the aforementioned
instruction. The accountant accused him of "not keeping
the book he was ordered to, and of not having signed in the book
of the German coiners... and that also, after having adjusted the
coins, before blanching and striking them, they be assayed once,
after which they be blanched a second time, and this was not
done, for which he claimed that although this be customary in the
coins struck in the our Kingdom, it cannot be done in the Segovia
Mill Mint (24)."
These shortcomings of Racionero, in which Morales is also
implicated, later became the responsibility of the accountant
general of the Treasury, whom was ordered by the King in the
aforementioned document, to look the other way regarding these
and other anomalies in the initial coinage of the Mill Mint. In
this decree of March 11, 1588, the King ordered, with respects to
the accountant's responsibility: "...and I relieve you
of any responsibility or blame that because of this you might be
charged with."
Another curious detail which arises from this document is that
the scribe of the Mill Mint, the official in charge of
registering all the data in the mint's ledgers, was Juan de
Morales' brother.
Doubts about the fineness of the alloy used began to emerge as
soon as the coins left the mint. The first coins were struck on
March 23, 1586 (25), and the Count of Chinchon, treasurer of the
Mint, was already informing the King´s secretary on April 2nd,
regarding certain worrisome declarations that Morales had made.
According to the Count:
"This Juan de Morales says that in not one of all of
the mints in this Kingdom are coins struck conforming to
regulation fineness, which is 11 dineros and 4 grains, but rather
11 dineros and 2 grains, and from there under; and that if His
Majesty, without expressly ordering, permitted him to alloy in
the Mill Mint somewhat below the 11 dineros and 4 grains, he
would still be alloying finer silver than in all the other mints
in the Kingdom, and His Majesty would benefit greatly from the
difference between the one and the other (26)."
In another letter, this one dated April 7th, the Count warned
the King's secretary that he should start "undoing
Morales' plan, since he has his hands in the batter and intends
to remain occupied" at the Mint (27).
We should emphasize that there was also another assayer at the
Mill Mint: Joaquin Lingahel, a German, who came with the other
German technicians and the convoy that brought the machinery from
the Hall mint, near Innsbruck, Austria, where it was designed and
built. But Lingahel rarely appears in the documents pertaining to
the early coinage, and in fact, he protested to the King on
numerous occasions that he felt he was serving "without
much honor."
On April 8th, the King's secretary wrote the Count expressing
the apprehension of the president of the Royal Treasury about the
three keys to the security vault at the Mint: Morales had one,
Racionero another, and the Bishop of Segovia, who due to other
obligations could not attend the work at the Mint, had the third.
He continued stating that "Morales does not want to be
accompanied, and although he probably knows how to perform his
duties as assayer, he has little knowledge about coining, and he
speaks more than his talent permits, and since he has no other
occupation or entertainment, he desires to perpetuate himself in
this one...(28)."
Soon, suspicions about the fineness of the coins flowed like
rumors all around Segovia, exacerbated, we must assume, by the
missing assayers mark on the coins. On June 11th, Racionero
complained to the president of the Royal Treasury that the Bishop
of Segovia had gone to the Mint to withdraw samples of the
coinage in order to ascertain its fineness. According to
Racionero:
"Juan de Morales and I have taken offense with these
assays of the Bishop for not showing an order from His Majesty to
perform them, and for having said and published, he and others
from the Old Segovia Mint, that we only strike coinage here of 11
dineros. And not happy with that, they have sent the German's
coins to be assayed at the Toledo, Seville and Granada mints; and
what's more, this audacity I consider to be a disservice to the
King, who took offense with Juan de Morales, even though he
performs his office with truth and much care and diligence; and
for my part, I relate that each day he complies with what His
Majesty orders...(29)."
Another document makes reference to a memorandum by Sebastian
Muñoz, a Segovian silversmith, in which he suggests that Morales
be dismissed. The Kings secretary summarized by jotting down "everyone
writes that a different assayer is needed to alloy the silver
because Morales is very busy and not very skillful at this (30)."
Months after all the silver had been struck, Morales was
obligated to be put through an examination of his knowledge of
assaying techniques, a test apparently designed more to quell the
rumors about his abilities, than to find specific fault with any
particular coins. We say this because the test didn't include the
inspection of a single coin struck from the silver that Morales
had alloyed at the Mint. We can suppose that Morales knew
perfectly well how to assay metals; his only problem was that he
apparently had some type of order that the alloy at the Mill Mint
be of a reduced fineness, which of course would not be evident in
this test of his ability.
On December 16th, 1586, the King's secretary sent Morales
another of those letters ordering him to appear in person again
in Madrid, without offering any details or reason. This letter
contains a certain air of importance, but does not impart
urgency. Could it be that Morales was to be given orders to cease
the debasement experiment before the next shipment of silver from
Seville, not scheduled to arrive in Segovia until mid January?
We'll see later, according to certain account ledgers we've
discovered, that the only year in which the coins appear to have
a reduced fineness was 1586; the first year of coinage at the new
Mint, although the assayer mark remained absent from all the
coins produced there during the remainder of Philip II's reign.
Is it possible that the King found out everything he wanted to
know during the first year of coinage and then put an end to the
experiment, but left the assayer's mark off the subsequent
coinage so as not to attract any more attention to the affair?
In any case, Morales' dilemma continued to worsen, according
to what we gather from a letter Racionero sent to the King on
January 3rd, 1587:
"Juan de Morales has done in all this only that which
in the service of Your Majesty he should have, and in this City
he has been intensely followed and persecuted, and today even
more than ever. I believe in his ministry of the assay and that
he tells the truth. I beg of Your Majesty, that in whatever it
be, he receive Your Majesty's favor (31)."
As we mentioned before, during this period in time there
existed a general confusion as to the correct method of
performing the assay and as a result, fraud was rampant in all of
the Spanish mints. On November 12th, 1587, King Philip II ordered
that a criminal trial be brought against Juan Castellanos and
Company, and other gold and silver merchants, as well as the
assayers of various mints. Today, the meticulous details of the
proceedings of this trial are available to us in two historical
document books: one of more than 1,600 pages in length (32), and
the other of 164 pages (33); this later one being the conclusions
that were arrived at by the judge commissioned in the case, the
honorable Mr. Armenteros, justice of the Kings own Court and thus
the highest in the Kingdom, including his own private opinion on
the outcome, signed and dated on October 12th, 1588. As we recall
from other studies, the new regulations specifying the correct
and definitive method of performing an assay were dated on July
2nd, 1588, meaning that Armenteros, in his concluding opinions
about the trial, already had access to what we could call the
true methodology of the assay.
In his private observations on the trial brought against the
metals mercahants, Armenteros makes the most direct and profound
reference we have yet discovered to what we suspect was a
purposefully devised scheme by the King regarding the debasement
of the coins struck at his Mint. According to Armenteros,
referring to certain declarations made by the merchants
implicated in the trial:
"And what's more, they say that Your Majesty ordered
by way of a special permit or notice, dispatched by the Council
of the Treasury, that Juan de Morales, the assayer of the Mill
Mint that Your Majesty has in Segovia, was to alloy with 5 reales
the said silver ingots of purest fineness. I just can't believe
it! And if Your Majesty ordered that, he certainly must not have
been guided correctly, because by force the alloy would have
turned out to be short 2 grains in fineness. And I plea to God
that the favors of these guilty merchants were not the authors of
this fraud. And in the case that Your Majesty, by way of his
knowledge and Royal powers, has been served that in his Mint the
coinage be carried out in this manner, the privilege that has
been granted to this Mint because of its curious manufacture and
the beauty of it's coins, should not be extended throughout the
Kingdom, and it should be restricted only to the mint which Your
Majesty has been served to confer it, and it doesn´t result in
excessive harm, in as much as Your Majesty orders only his own
silver to be minted there, and in the Kingdom no one receives any
damage, and outside the Kingdom, if Your Majesty is responsible
for the debasement of the fineness, Your Majesty will be held
accountable (34)."
Another person who carried out tasks relating to the
merchant's fraudulent activities was Francisco Baptista Veintin,
who would later be named Chief Assayer of the Realm, an office
created in the aforementioned regulation on assays. In 1592,
Veintin penned a memorandum in which he requested his salary for
the previous six years, including a list of the services which he
had performed, which included the capture and arrest of the
guilty merchants in the since famous trial. He also assured in
his list that he went to Segovia "to perform certain
tasks that were required of him for that lawsuit"
(probably related to the coinage that the merchants struck in the
other mint in Segovia, the "Old Mint") and summarized
by pointing out: "I have also dealt with other very
serious matters which I will not mention here because His Majesty
already has those papers. All of which I have dealt with and
performed during those referred to six years (35)." We
mention this just in case it pertains to something related with
the alloy that Juan de Morales prepared in the Mill Mint (where
no merchant entered to strike coins until during the reign of
Philip III); inasmuch as we havn't seen any other matter related
to the manufacture of coins during this period that seems to have
been treated with such confidentiality as the actions of Juan de
Morales in the Mill Mint.
The accounts of Juan de Morales also present certain signals
that call our attention. To begin with, the account of metals
that he was in charge of during 1586, 1587 y 1588, reveal words
that have been crossed out along side a note that cautions that
the account only contains the "residuals" of
the 1586 coinage. At the end of the account Morales penned in
addition: "and if for the credits or debits of what I
was responsible for, it be convenient for the service of His
Majesty that I give further explanation or clarity, I will do
such according to what I have in my ledgers and manuals (36)."
As a matter of fact, it seems that Morales' bookkeeping was
notoriously confidential. In 1597, access to the records of both
Morales and Lingahel was requested in an unrelated lawsuit by the
heirs of the deputy treasurer of the Mint, who also served during
the same period of time. This was the normal procedure for
verifying records for such purposes. Nevertheless, in this case,
the Council of the Treasury deemed this normal method
inappropriate, stating:
"Because turning these books over to people who are
different from those who drew them up, particularly because they
are unaware of the conditions under which they were redacted,
could be inconvenient. It seems, if Your Majesty is thus served,
that these original books could be ordered to be brought to the
General Accounting Office for the verification and knowledge of
their content, inasmuch as at the Segovia Mint they are no longer
needed nor do they serve a purpose (37)."
Although we have not found data in the regular account ledgers
enabling us to verify the fineness of the coins struck in 1586,
we have found a letter dated November 7th, of that year which
Morales sent directly to King Philip II in which he
mentions the total weight in pure silver which he processed that
year and the total weight of the copper he used in the alloy
(38). This data permits us to calculate the fineness of the
alloy; which results in exactly 11 dineros and 2 grains,
precisely as the honorable justice Armenteros stated in his
observations on the trial of the metals merchants. If we next
calculate the theoretical benefit which the King obtained by
having the entire shipment of silver struck during 1586 with a
debasement in fineness of 2 grains, we arrive at 40,334 reales of
excess monetary value, which we can then contrast with the more
then 1,654,400 reales he obtained through fines and sureties due
to the frauds committed by the merchants.
We should point out that the Mint's accounts beginning in 1587
are perfectly documented, and that calculating the fineness of
this subsequent coinage, employing the same formula we used for
the year 1586, the fineness turns out each year to be just a
little above the regulation 11 dineros and 4 granos (39), leading
us to conclude that if there actually was an intentional
manipulation of the fineness of the Segovia Mint coins by Philip
II, it only lasted for one year.
The absence of the assayer mark on all of the silver coins
struck at the Segovia Mill Mint during the reign of King Philip
II has always been one of the biggest mysteries of modern Spanish
coinage and was always worthy of a detailed numismatic
investigation.
All indications point to a scheme having been put into action
by the King regarding the debasement of these coins, and that he
himself decided to omit the assayer mark for prudence sake, since
he could not guarantee the fineness of the coinage. In support of
this theory, we know that the King considered these coins to be
part of a "test or experiment", although he
ordered them to be "distributed and spent."
Owing to the sequence of events studied, it seems that what
the King learned in this experiment permitted him to bring firm
charges against the gold and silver merchants and assayers who
had been manipulating the fineness of the coinage in all of the
mints for more than 20 years, as well as enabling him to do away
with the misconceptions surrounding the technical procedures of
performing assays and to establish a new and definitive
regulation controlling the proper methodology. In this sence, the
King must have thought that the best way to catch a criminal,
discover his tricks, and calculate his profits, was to recreate
the crime in a real life situation.
According to several indications, it seems the experiment only
lasted for one year, although the assayer mark remained absent
from all Mill Mint coinage - even after the definitive regulation
for the Mint was given in 1596 (41) - until after the death of
King Philip II, not appearing for the first time until several
years into the seventeenth century, and then without even the
slightest mention in documentary sources thus far discovered.
We should also remember that Kings Charles III as well as
Charles IV also debased the fineness of coinage in order to
create necessary funds; both cases shrouded in absolute secrecy
beyond the sworn officials who implemented the order. As a
result, it shouldn't surprise us that Philip II could have
considered doing the same two centuries earlier, just as our old
friend Francisco Baptista Veintin, proposed to Philip III in
1608, while he was Chief Assayer of the Realm, offering to plan
the debasement "in such a manner that no one would find
out (42)."
As an anecdote, we could add that King Philip II probably
considered the permanent debasement of Spain's silver coinage as
being an unwise decision, perhaps because these coins were such a
vital part of being able to maintain his possessions in central
and northern Europe, opting instead to eliminate the small silver
alloy that the copper coinage contained, which only circulated in
Castille (43). In such a case, the "Prudent King"
probably remembered the harsh warning which the honorable justice
Armenteros gave him regarding the coinage that his Royal Treasury
sent outside the Kingdom: "if Your Majesty is
responsible for the debasement of the fineness, Your Majesty will
be held accountable."
(1) All of the silver coined at the Royal Mill Mint in Segovia
from the first piece struck in 1586 through the death of Phillip
II in 1598, belonged personally, to the King. There is no proof,
documentary or otherwise, of any gold being coined at this mint
during that period. The first silver to be minted there by a
private individual was not until 1609, while in the case of gold
it was in 1607.
(2) Published by the Museo Casa de la Moneda (F.N.M.T.), 1997,
[425 pp.].
(3) King Philip II (1556-1598) is generally refered to as the
"Prudent King."
(4) Pragmatica of Medina del Campo, dated June 13th, 1497.
(5) Documentary sources from the Archivo General de Simancas
(AGS), sections: Casa y Sitios Reales (C.S.R.), Consejo y Juntas
de Hacienda (C.J.H.), and Contaduría Mayor de Cuentas (C.M.C.).
(6) The accusations made by the gold and silver merchants,
according to the honorable justice Armenteros, as we will see
later on, made no mention of the missing assayer mark on the
coins.
(7) RIVERO, Casto Mª del: El Ingenio de la Moneda de Segovia,
Madrid, 1919, p. 26.
(8) On pages 79 and 263 of his book.
(9) On pages 79 and 229 of his book.
(10) PARKER, Geoffrey: Felipe II, Alianza Editorial, 1995.
(11) In 1771 and 1786, respectively.
(12) Documents exist today for the debasement order and the
oaths of secrecy sworn by the treasurer, assayer and founder of
each mint.
(13) MURRAY, Glenn: Génesis del Real Ingenio... NVMISMA,
No. 232, 1993, p. 192.
(14) Juan de Arfe y Villafañe: "Quilatador de la plata,
oro y piedras...", Madrid, 1598.
(15) AGS, C.S.R., leg. 278.
(16) San Lorenzo, July 2nd, 1588: Norte de la Contratación,
book I, chapter XXXIII, p. 13; transcribed by Rosa Romero in NVMISMA,
No. 233, 1993, doc. 1.
(17) AGS, C.S.R., leg. 277, fol. 22.
(18) AGS, C.J.H., leg. 271-2ª, carp. 16, pp. 9 and 10.
(19) AGS, C.J.H., leg. 218, carp. 16.
(20) AGS, C.J.H., leg. 271-2ª, carp. 16., p. 17.
(21) AGS, C.J.H., leg. 271-2ª, carp. 16, p. 7.
(22) AGS, C.J.H., leg. 271-2ª, carp. 16, pp. 9 and 10.
(23) Idem.
(24) RIVERO, Casto Mª del: El Ingenio... doc. 6 p. 60.
(25) MURRAY, Glenn: "La fundación del Real Ingenio de la
Moneda de Segovia desde los primeros indicios hasta sus primeras
monedas"; published in Premios Mariano Grau, Real
Academia de Historia y Arte de San Quirce, Segovia, 1997, p. 487.
(26) AGS, C.S.R., leg. 267-2º, fol. 176.
(27) AGS, C.S.R., leg. 267-2º, fol 180.
(28) AGS, C.S.R., leg. 267-2º, fol. 181.
(29) AGS, C.S.R., leg. 267-2º, fol. 186.
(30) AGS, C.S.R., leg. 267-2º, fol. 185.
(31) AGS, C.S.R., leg. 267-2º, fol. 192.
(32) AGS, C.S.R., leg. 278.
(33) AGS, C.S.R., leg. 277, fol. 22.
(34) AGS, C.S.R., leg. 277, fol. 22.
(35) AGS, C.J.H., leg. 292, carp. 15.
(36) AGS, C.M.C.-2ª época, leg. 314.
(37) AGS, C.J.H., leg. 369, carp. 13.
(38) AGS, C.S.R., leg. 267-2º, fol. 194.
(39) MURRAY, Glenn: "Las acuñaciones de plata en el
Ingenio de Segovia - Felipe II," unpublished.
(40) The definitive conclusion about this affair will have to
await, for the time being, pending a chemical analysis of a
sampling of the coinage in question (using non destructive
methods) to clarify the true fineness of the alloy used.
(41) This regulation would have technically ended any supposed
trial phase of the new Mint. "Instruction of December 31,
1596": AGS, C.S.R., leg. 306, fol. 290.
(42) AGS, C.J.H., leg. 485, carp. 8.
(43) By decree of 1596.
(end)