1. Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London: Verso, 1979), 124. Debasement technically refers only to reduction in fineness, but the term is commonly used to describe any reduction in precious metal content of coins (fineness or weight).
2. Nicholas Mayhew, Sterling: The History of a Currency (New York: Wiley, 1999), 46. There were other minor incidents when rulers allowed lower-quality coins to pass. See, for example, Henry VII’s proclamations ordering subjects to continue using “small, thin, and old pence” as long as “they be silver and whole,” as well as cracked coins and clipped coins with at least half the scripture remaining. TRP, 1:47, 1:60–61, 1:70–74.
3. There had been an early example of debasement in 1048 under Edward the Confessor; see Glyn Davies, A History of Money: From Ancient Times to the Present Day (Cardiff: U of Wales P, 2002), 134. But the effects of the rare earlier English debasements paled in comparison to Henry’s debasement.
4. See Carlo M. Cipolla, “Currency Depreciation in Medieval Europe,” Economic History Review, 2nd series 15.3 (1963): 419. David Glassner declares that the “history of money virtually coincides with a history of the debasement, depreciation, and devaluation of the currency by the state.” “An Evolutionary Theory of the State Monopoly over Money,” Money and the Nation-State, ed. Kevin Dowd and Richard H. Timberlake, Jr. (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1998), 21.
5. Peter Spufford, Money and Its Use in Medieval Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988), 289, 307. For ancient precedents of debasement and depreciation during times of war, see Glassner, “Evolutionary,” 26.