Draft of MINT00416 (Mint 19/3/74)

In obedience to your Lordships Order of Reference of the 27 Nov. last, upon the annexed Memorial of the three Commissioners appointed by her Majestys late Privy Council of Scotland to receive all the Scots & forreign coin & see it melted into Ingots & deliver the Ingots by weight & assay to thhe Master of the Mint at Edinburgh upon this Note to be coined & to certify the deficiency; in which Memorial they humbly desire that your Lordship will be pleased to appoint them a suitable reward for their own attendance & trouble & for paying their Clerk & other servants & defraying the daily charge they are put to & grownd their Petition upon their Commission which bears that they shall be sufficiently rewarded: We have considered the said Memorial, & because the business of these Commissioners requires diligent attendance in their own persons & constant circumspection at the meltings, & their trust in receiving the old money by tale & weight & certifying the deficiency is also considerable; We are humbly of opinion that they may deserve for themselves & for paying their Clerk & other servants, a reward after the rate of two pence per pound eight of all the Ingots of silver delivered from the melting pot to the Master of the Mint by weight & assayed to be coined. And because these Commissioners in conjunction with the Bank of Scotland act as common Importers for all the people & in their service and do the buisiness which private Importers must have otherwise done for themselves or procured to be done at their own charge, before the silver could have been delivered into the Mint to be coined & are entrusted between the Commissioners of the Equivalent & the people to keep an account; the charge of imploying these Commissioners is in our humble opinion to be put upon the account of the Importers & allowed out of the equivalent as a part of the losses which private persons sustein by the recoinage of their money, this recoinage being required by the Act of Vnion & being impracticable without this allowance.