Happily Lowndes was completely refuted by Locke in his _Further Considerations Concerning the Raising the Value of Money_, 1695.
Locke recommended what Dudley North had advised, namely, that the King should issue a proclamation declaring hammered money should pass only by weight. What searching, branding, fining, burning, and hanging had failed to do would have been accomplished at once. The clipping of the hammered coin and the melting of the new milled coin to be made into silver plate would have ceased. But it had one objection. The loss would fall on the individual. Those in whose hands the clipped coin happened to be at a particular moment would bear the loss. But the loss in equity should be borne by the State which had allowed such evils to go unchecked.
It was suggested to remedy this that all clipped coin after a certain date would be exchanged for good coin at the mint. But it was soon realized that this would make clipping more profitable than ever.
A real remedy was devised but unhappily it fell through. A proclamation was to be prepared with great secrecy, and published simultaneously in all parts of the kingdom. This was to declare hammered coin should thenceforth only pass by weight. Every possessor of such coin could within three days deliver it in a sealed packet to the local authorities to be weighed and would receive a promissory note to receive from the Treasury the difference between the actual quantity of silver the pieces contained and the quantity they should have contained.
Anxious days followed in Parliament, but it was determined the public should bear the loss on the clipped coins. It was laid down that a time should be fixed when no clipped money should pass, except in payments to the Government, and that a later time should be fixed after which no clipped money should pass at all. The 4th of May, 1696, was named as the date on which the Government would cease to receive clipped money in payment of taxes.
Ten furnaces were erected in a garden behind the Treasury, which was then a part of Whitehall, and which lay between the Banqueting House and the river. Every day huge heaps of clipped and unrecognizable coins were here turned into ingots of silver and were sent off to the Mint at the Tower (_L’Hermitage_, January 14-24, 1696).