uds in the coin
became of worse consequence and not only so, but were more practised.

In the reign of King William and Queen Mary, clipping and coining grew
so notorious and had so great and fatal influences on the public trade
of the nation, that Parliament found it necessary to enter upon that
great work of a recoinage[5] and in order to prevent all future
inconveniences of a like nature, they at the same time enacted that not
only counterfeiting, chipping, scaling, lightening, or otherwise
debasing the current specie of this realm, should be deemed and punished
as high treason, but they included also under the same charge and
punishment the having any press, engine, tool, or implement proper for
coining, the mending, buying, selling, etc., of them; and upon this Act,
which was rendered perpetual by another made in the seventh year of the
reign of Queen Anne, all our proceedings on this head are at this day
grounded. Many executions and many more trials happened on these laws
being first made, dipping, especially, being an ordinary thing, and some
persons of tolerable reputation in the world engaged in it; but the
strict proceedings (in the days of King William, especially) against
all, without distinction, who offended in that way, so effectually
crushed them that a coiner nowadays is looked upon as an extraordinary
criminal, though the Law still continues to take its course, whenever
they are convicted, the Crown being seldom or never induced to grant a
pardon.

As to this poor woman, Barbara Spencer, she was the daughter of mean
parents and was left very young to the care of her mother, who lived in
the parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate. This old creature, as is common
enough with ordinary people, indulged her daughter so much in all her
humours, and suffered her to take so uncontrolled a liberty that all her
life-time after, she was incapable of bearing restraint, but, on every
slight contradiction flew out into the wildest excesses of passion and
fury. When but a child, on a very slight difference at home, she must
needs go out 'prentice, and was accordingly put to a mantua-maker, who
having known her throughout her infancy, fatally treated her with the
same indulgence and tenderness. She continued with her about two years,
and then, on a few warm words happening, went away from so good a
mistress, and came home again to her mother, who by that time had set up
a brandy shop.

On Miss Barbara's return, a maid h